


Lights that Burn Blue

by dove_called_jay



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Discussion Of Murder, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Major Character Injury, Oral Sex, Stiles and Jackson in London, author's first fic, because KouriArashi says so, discussion of death of a parent, full shift wolves, so many original characters, the sheriff's name is Tom, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-20 00:44:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 42,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5986582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dove_called_jay/pseuds/dove_called_jay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story diverges from cannon after 3A (which ended not in early October, but around Christmas.)</p>
<p>Things have been quiet in Beacon Hills since the defeat of the Darach and the Alpha Pack, and now, in the summer before senior year, Derek has hooked Stiles up with the pack he got Jackson into in London so that he can learn from a different Emissary. During his study abroad summer he learns more about his spark, the running of a traditional werewolf pack, and Jackson - who is remarkably different away from his parents. </p>
<p>When he comes home to Beacon Hills in the fall it turns out that he can't leave everything from the summer behind. </p>
<p>*This story has, by necessity, many, many original characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this story last year after reading a ton of Teen Wolf fanfic, but never having seen an episode. I've seen them all now, but some of the details might be slightly different, because when I started writing I just assumed a lot of the plot points. 
> 
> This isn't particularly important to the story, but in this 'verse, Jackson and Isaac didn't live across the street from each other - honestly if you look at Jackson's house and Isaac's house, there's no way they were in the same neighborhood. Practically this means that Jackson was never a smug douche about testifying against Isaac with regard to Roger Lahey's death, because he didn't know anything.
> 
> Peter is not evil after he comes back. 
> 
> I don't know what year it's supposed to be in the show, but in this story summer 2014 is the summer before their senior year. Assume that most things happened as cannon up to the end of 3A, but that events were more spread out and the final showdown happened in early-mid December, not early October, as happens on the show. Since the Darach and the Alpha pack have been defeated things have been quiet in Beacon Hills. 
> 
> As of the posting of the first chapter - 2/12/16 - I have over 50,000 words written. Updates may come fast and furious in the beginning and then slow down, but they are coming.
> 
> Thanks and hope you enjoy!

The clocks on the wall said that it was coming up on 3:00 in the afternoon but Stiles's brain was pretty sure it was almost 7:00 in the morning and in spite of Virgin Atlantic's best efforts, he had been up all night. After a stroll through customs, ("No Sir, I absolutely do not have any magical weapons secreted about my person") and the check on his student visa, Stiles was almost not nervous about the strange werewolf he was supposed to meet. 

He could tell his brain was going to be wanting his meds soon, so he rolled over to a water fountain to take care of that. No use subjecting a strange werewolf in a strange city to Stiles: Unmedicated. He was worried enough about meeting a fully formed pack as it was.

He wiped his mouth on a sleeve, hitched his backpack higher up, grabbed his wheelie bag, and rolled through the last set of doors. Everyone was holding signs up, just like in the movies, but there was no sign for "Stiles," "Stiles Stilinski," or even "Mr. Stilinski." Just what he needed, to sit in the airport growing increasingly sweaty and waiting for someone with supernatural smelling powers.

He wheeled his bag out of the stream of traffic and saw a hot guy waiting on the edge of the crowd. His seatmate in-flight had been a 68 year old grandmother coming home from visiting her eight grandchildren, and one of them had taught her to use the camera function on her iPhone, so he figured the universe owed him this one, okay?

Aged, velvety blue jeans over strong thighs, black t-shirt, small enough to show a slender waist and thick chest. The t-shirt said, "The Slaughtered Lamb" on the front and had a wolf's head impaled on a spike, so that wasn't great, but the sleeves were tight enough to show biceps and shoulders, so Stiles was willing to overlook it. Wide, expressive mouth, sharp cheekbones, light blue eyes, and inky black hair. Multiple piercings in each ear and a leather jacket slung over his shoulder. 

Was being the son of a Sheriff like being the daughter of a preacher? Was he just hard wired to spring for bad boys?

"Alright, Stilinski?" The guy laughed, and Stiles was still trying to decide if it was a mean laugh or not when the pieces finally fell into place.

"Fuck! Jackson?" Stiles's former seatmate was just passing by and shot him a shocked and affronted look before huffing off to her Wheetabix or something. 

"Hey. I asked Rolland if I could come pick you up." He looked a little sheepish and seemed to be staring at Stiles's left shoulder.

"Yeah, Dude, okay. You know where we're going?"

"Yeah, your room is above Rolland's pub, Derek told you that, right? I work behind the bar," he gestured to his shirt and Stiles blanched. Seemed like kind of anti-werewolf imagery, but it wasn't like he could ask about it in the middle of Heathrow. "You got everything?"

"What? Oh, yeah." Fuck, he had just been checking out Jackson Whittemore. Could he smell the arousal over the airplane and other people smells? Thank god he didn't smell like that any more, though he was willing to bet he reeked of embarrassment.

Just then Jackson leaned over and took a deep breath in the vicinity of the aforementioned left shoulder. He smiled. "You smell like them."

"Yeah, my dad had to work, so Lydia and Scott drove me to SanFran for the flight."

"That's going to be weird until you've cycled through your clothes. Family but not family, you know? Want me to carry anything?"

"Thanks, I've got it." 

"We're just headed to the train station, you've still got a ways before we get home." He slipped the jacket off his shoulder and put it on, turning to lead Stiles away from the crowd. "Did you sleep at all on the flight?"

"Nope. Too keyed up."

"They're a good family and Rolland's awesome. You'll like it here."

"What about Abbot? He's who I'm here to see." Stiles couldn't see Jackson's face from this angle, but his posture stiffened before he shook it off for the lope that was really working for those jeans.

"Yeah, I don't have that much to do with him. He's pretty intense." Stiles shut up while Jackson bought them train tickets and then fell into step behind him again. There was one in the station so they were able to board right away. 

"Shit, should I have gotten money?"

"Nah, man, Derek gave you a card, right? You can just use that. I'll show you a place in town if you want to get some cash."

Jackson led him to an almost deserted car and hustled Stiles to an inside seat far away from any of the other passengers. He propped his foot up on the seat next to them and sent out a perfunctory "don't fuck with me" look before turning back to Stiles.

"Look man, I uh. I asked Rolland if I could be the one to come pick you up because I had a few things I wanted to say before we got to The Lamb."

"Oh, okay. Sure." Stiles was tired and confused and really didn't feel like having a conversation more complicated than, "thank you for the chips, where is the bed," but whatever.

"I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry about last year. The uh, lizard stuff. I know now you were just trying to help, I mean obviously you were just trying to help, but I was crazy scared and nothing was making sense. There were a lot of issues and none of them were your fault, so I'm sorry for being such a dick to you."

"Wow. Um, okay. Was not expecting this to be my first conversation in London. Honestly, I didn't think I'd see much of you at all, since you've been avoiding all of us for the last like, fourteen months." 

"Well, I mean, I work at the bar where you're going to live, so yeah. And I'm in touch with Lyds, obviously."

"Uh, not obviously, Dude. She saved you with the power of her love even though you were a dick of a boyfriend and then you just like, disappeared across the world. Also, she's never mentioned you."

The train jolted out of the station and Stiles was knocked sideways into black leather over hard muscle. He righted himself and frowned, fully working up to a Lydia-defending rant. 

"Yeah, me and Lyds. Look, this is the other reason I wanted to pick you up, since you'll probably find out once we get to The Lamb anyway."

"What, are all the barmaids bitter, jilted ex-girlfriends, too?"

"Christ, Stilinski, I'm trying to tell you. Lyds and I were never a thing. She saved me with the power of her love, yeah, but it was like, sisterly love. I'm into guys and Lyds has pretty much always known, and I'm out here. That's why you'll know when we get to The Lamb, 'cause like half the girls in the pack," he coughed, "family, keep trying to set me up with random guys they meet on the street."

"What."

"Aw, Derek taught you how to ask questions without using inflection, that is so adorable."

"Fuck off, Whittemore." 

"You first, Stilinski." Jackson rolled his eyes. "Look, man, I'm gay, okay? Lyds and Derek are the only people back home who know, so please keep it to yourself, but everybody here knows so it'd be like, impossible to keep it from you. I know it's your natural state, but try not to be a dick."

"Fuck you, man, I don't care if you're gay. Did you miss where I'm bi?" And now Stiles was getting pissed; was he the one on this train who made fun of people for being different? Fuck no, he was not.

"Huh. I did not know that."

"I guess I came out right in the middle of the lizard rampage, so it makes sense that you might have missed it." Jackson's jaw tightened and Stiles changed the subject in lieu of an apology. "Wait, only Lydia and Derek? Danny doesn't know?"

"Yeah, only Lydia and Derek, so keep your trap shut when you call home tonight to sing McCall his lullaby."

"Dude, Danny is your best friend. And also gay."

"I haven't talked to him since I got here." Jackson slouched farther down in the seat.

"Un. Real. I was sure the two of you were fucking even when I thought you were straight."

"Spent a lot of time picturing me naked, huh, Stilinski?" And there was the sneer! Stiles had missed it so little.

"Please see earlier, re: fuck off."

"Come on, Dude, you were completely checking me out when you got through customs." 

"Yeah, then I saw your personality and my penis was embarrassed by his poor taste in men and he fled."

Jackson flushed and looked away. "Gross! Do not talk about your penis to me."

"Wait! Lydia saved you with the power of her sisterly love?" Jackson rolled his head to the side to look Stiles in the eye again. "Dude, have you seen _Frozen_?"

Jackson groaned. "It is going to be a long ten weeks."

\-----

Stiles was so tired by the time the train reached Whitechapel that he let Jackson roll his wheelie bag to the pub. At this point he honestly felt it was a matter of public safety; he was awkward at the best of times and had now been up for over twenty four hours. Plus his brain was confused by the whole Jackson-is-gay and Lyds-and-I-were-never-a-thing aspects of the conversation on the train. Wheeling a bag through busy streets seemed like it might require a higher level of brain function than he was capable of at the moment. 

The Slaughtered Lamb was between a small market and a used/new book shop. The same grisly sign on Jackson's t-shirt was painted on a board above the door. Stiles couldn't tell how old the building was, but he would have guessed that the style was Tudor - it was all heavy beams and mullioned windows, assuming mullioned meant what he thought it did. He couldn't tell though, if it was the real deal or just rebuilt to look like Ye Olde English Pub. 

Jackson pushed open the door to a large room and let Stiles precede him over the threshold. The lights in the bar flickered and the gas lamps (fake?) over the bar glowed red. The room was large and welcoming, if somewhat lacking in natural light. The stone walls were lined with booths and there were tables scattered around a three sided bar that stuck out from the center of the back wall. The room was wider than it was deep, and that was true for the bar as well. 

The left side of the room was dominated by a huge old hearth and a small fire was burning there. It still somehow managed to be cooler inside than on the street. Probably it was all the stone. Jackson wheeled past Stiles and led a winding path between tables up to the bar and possibly the biggest man Stiles had ever seen. 

"Alright, Rolland?" He asked when they got closer. Rolland turned from where he was talking to a pretty girl through a window to what was evidently the kitchen and smiled at Jackson. 

"Hey, Jax. Everything go alright collecting your friend?"

"Yessir." Jackson reached a hand back to draw Stiles forward into the wash of that red light. "Rolland Dyer, meet Stiles Stilinski." Rolland was at least half a head taller than Stiles and probably weighed almost twice as much. He was one of those barrel-chested men in his late fifties who you kept expecting to go soft any moment, but no, he was still all muscle. He had short, spikey black hair, liberally shot through with silver and slate gray eyes set in a wide face with sharp angles. 

Stiles reached across the bar to shake Rolland's proffered hand, opened his mouth and, "Wow, I bet your wolf is really pretty" came out. 

Jackson choked a barked laugh into a snorting cough and Stiles yanked his hand back as all his blood rushed to his face. "I, um. Sorry about that. Didn't sleep on the plane, etc. I'm sure your wolf is not pretty. Fierce. He's probably fierce."

"That's alright, lad. I think he's quite pretty myself, though no one else has said so." Rolland smiled with what appeared to be genuine amusement and Jackson was relaxed beside him so he figured throat-ripping was probably off the agenda for the time being. 

Rolland took a few steps down the bar and snatched a couple of keys off a pegboard, turned, and tossed them to Jackson, who caught them easily. 

"Take your mate up to his room, Jax. Let him get unpacked and showered and then come on back down and we'll get an early supper. He can meet some of the pack and we'll go over the rules."

"Yessir. Come on, Stiles." Jackson let him to a door in the wall to the left of the bar. When the door closed behind Stiles, Jackson laughed. "Only you, Stilinski." He started up a narrow staircase, hauling the suitcase behind him. 

"Shut up!" Stiles hissed, face flaming up again. 

"They can't hear us. The Lamb has sound-proofing throughout. If the doors and windows to any room you're in are closed, you can't be overheard."

"Oh, that's handy." Stiles looked around as they made the first landing. 

"Rolland and his family all live on the third floor," he indicated the staircase which continued upwards. "That's all strictly out of bounds without an invitation, obviously. The rest of this floor is for travelers; sometimes it's people in the pack, sometimes just people in the supernatural world, and sometimes it's regular humans who just think it's fun to stay in an olde-timey pub in Whitechapel. Be aware of your surroundings before saying anything indiscreet in the hallways."

Stiles shot a glare at him but refrained from any acerbic remarks. 

"There are two bathrooms," Jackson pointed to each end of the hall. "And sorry, but as a non-paying guest, you have the crappy room." He led Stiles to the room next to the bathroom at the back of the house, on the side with the old bookstore.

He used the key to open the door and gestured Stiles into a room just large enough for a twin bed, chest of drawers, bedside table, window, and sink. He rolled the suitcase into the space between the foot of the bed and the window and Stiles came in and dumped his backpack on the bed. 

"We wash linens for long-term guests on Sunday mornings, so you'll want to strip your bed and put sheets and towels out in the hall before ten. " He nodded at the two towels folded on top of the dresser. "You'll have to take your clothes and shit to a laundromat, there's one a few streets over."

He set the keys down on the dresser, then grabbed a pad of paper and pen and scrawled something before ripping it off the top sheet and handing it to Stiles. "This is the protected wifi password; protected in the sense that the regular guests can't get on it and it's faster than the open wifi, it's not encrypted or anything."

"Thanks. I need to get on Skype and message my dad that I'm alive and un-gnawed." 

"Yeah, I figured." Jackson smirked. "Oh, that basket by the sink; Macy, that's Rolland's daughter, she's a little older than us but she works here, too, she went and got a bunch of toiletries and shit for you so you wouldn't have to worry about that first thing." 

"Oh, cool."

"Yeah, Mace is great." Jackson looked around. "Okay, I'll let you get unpacked and then you should have a shower and come down for dinner. I think the pie tonight is venison, that work for you?"

Stiles had never had venison before. His closest encounter with it had been back in the spring, when Derek had taken down a deer on the preserve and dragged it back to the Hale house one afternoon. Stiles had suddenly had an emergency with his Bio homework and headed home.

"Sure, what the hell? When in The Slaughtered Lamb, right?" Jackson looked like he was trying not to laugh again. 

"Don't fall asleep yet. I'll see you downstairs in a few."

\-----

Stiles unpacked first and stashed the empty suitcase under the bed. He discovered plug adapters in Macy Dyer's basket of goodies, so he plugged in his phone and laptop and hooked both up to the wifi. He shot messages to his dad, Derek, Scott, and Lydia to let them all know that he was safely arrived. He refrained from mentioning Jackson. 

Showering on the hall was going to be weird. Yeah, the rooms were all soundproof for werewolves, but were they smell proof? Okay, so it wasn't an issue at the moment, even he was too tired, but how was he going to jerk off if werewolves were washing his sheets and sharing his shower? 

At least the hall bathroom was nice. It wasn't opulent by any means, but it was clean and the fixtures definitely weren't authentic Tudor. Most importantly there was hot water and decent water pressure. And it wasn't like he was on vacation, after all. Stiles was here to study and learn so that he could be a kickass Emissary for his True Alpha brother. 

\----- 

Stiles poked his head out from the stairwell door into the bar proper. Rolland was behind the bar, but Jackson had on one of those short black aprons and was bussing tables. Jackson was bussing tables. Stiles felt like he'd need to see that a few more times before it made sense. He slid into the room and closed the door behind himself. Rolland looked up and smiled at him. 

"Grab a seat in one of those booths, lad," he gestured to the deserted right side of the room. "Our dinner's almost up. Jax," he changed focus, "get some drinks and come join us."

Stiles picked the booth in the back corner, but then found that he had to make himself sit with his back to the room so that Rolland could be the one facing out. Even though he knew these wolves were friendly it was somewhat nerve wracking. Rolland had gone to the little kitchen window, loaded up his arms with three plates, and made his way across the bar.

He sat one plate down in front of Stiles, one across, and one at the end of the table."Pie and chips and veg," he smiled as he sat down across from Stiles. Jackson joined them a moment later with three Pepsis, then hooked a nearby chair over with his ankle and sat at the end of the table.

They made small talk as they worked their way through their meals. (How was your flight? How's Derek? Was Peter still an annoying little shit?) Stiles found himself relaxing as he talked to Rolland. Jackson, too, seemed far more relaxed and less angry than Stiles had ever seen him. It helped that the food was amazing. The pub chips were the real deal.

They were talking about the pub, which Rolland said his father had started in the '90's before the gentrification of Whitechapel really took off, when the pretty girl from the kitchen came up to the table. She was tall and strong looking, probably mid-twenties, with long black hair pulled away from her face, sharp features, and dancing gray eyes.

"Alright, fellas?" she smiled at them, but especially Stiles.

"Stiles Stilinski," Rolland introduced, "my daughter, Macy Dyer. She's the head cook here at The Lamb, even though she's qualified to be a chef somewhere fancy."

Stiles stood to shake her hand (he rather thought meeting the daughter of an Alpha werewolf was something you stood for.)

"So you're the famous Stiles!"

"Hi, nice to meet you." He shot a look at Jackson. What the hell had Whittemore told the pack about him?

"Oh, you're just as adorable as he said you'd be." She hugged Stiles and kissed him on the cheek. 

"Um."

"I think that's a fairly inaccurate interpretation of the description, but okay." Jackson was flushed pink and grumbly. 

"It's all in the subtext, isn't it luv?" Macy hit the 'luv' hard and winked at Stiles, so he did what he did best and provided a distraction.

"I want you to know that these are the best french fries I have ever had. Fried potatoes are something I take very seriously and these are perfection."

"Oh, sweetheart! Hear that, Dad? Smooth heartbeat, not a stutter. I told you this recipe was an improvement." She smacked Rolland on the shoulder.

"And thanks for the goodie basket in the room, that was really thoughtful."

"Well, you're ours for the summer so we're going to take care of you." She grabbed their empty plates and asked a quick, "Anything else?" At the polite denials, she winked at Stiles again and headed for the kitchen.

Jackson stood, "I'll get some more drinks and then we can start orientation?" Rolland smiled at him and clapped his shoulder.

When they were all settled in again Rolland took the lead.

"First off, Speak Freely."

"I'm sorry?" Did he want Stiles to tell him something?

"It's a system we've got here at The Lamb, what with it being a public place, but also a pack meeting place. You see the gas lamps above the bar?" Stiles looked and saw they were still burning merrily along with bright red flames. "They let us know who can hear us and change color when the status changes."

"Did you see the lights flicker when you came in this afternoon?" Jackson asked.

"Yeah."

"That's because that early on a Tuesday there were only pack members in the bar, so the gas lamps were glowing blue. When you walked in, a non-pack member but someone who was involved in the supernatural, all the lights flickered to show a change in status, and then the six gas lamps switched to red flames." Rolland was looking at Stiles to see if he was following.

"So, Jackson said that you sometimes have vanilla humans staying here. If one of them were to come in -"

"The lights would flicker and the lamps would glow amber and just look like normal flames."

"That is so cool." Stiles was seriously impressed. Had Abbot set this up? Would he learn how to do it? Maybe if Derek and Peter ever rebuilt the house he could make some kind of perimeter.

"Basically, London is a great deal larger than your Beacon Hills and more people means more chance of discovery. That means we have to be much more careful. If the lamps are amber there is absolutely no supernatural talk. Pack is family, Alpha is the boss, but there are plenty of places here we have shielded from eavesdropping if you need a quick word."

Stiles nodded sharply, glad he hadn't had a chance to mess that up yet.

"If they're red, like now," Jackson put in, "talking about wolves and Alpha and some generalities is okay. But you may not be the only non-pack member inside."

"Right." Stiles was figuring this out. "When I came down after unpacking, the lights didn't flicker, so the lamps were already red."

"Yeah, we'd a table full of warlocks from the City, and a couple of other folks had stopped in, too. No one I mind overhearing this conversation is still here though. There is absolutely no supernatural talk outside in the city; no talk anywhere you don't know is shielded."

"Okay, got it."

"You look asleep on your feet, lad, so the only other thing I'll tell you now is that Abbot called while you were upstairs. He got involved in some experiment so he can't meet you tonight, but he says to go over to the workshop tomorrow morning and you'll talk there."

"Okay. Where's the workshop?" Rolland shot a glance at Jackson, who wouldn't meet his eyes.

"You saw the book shop next door? Just go through the front, they open at 10:00. One of my wolves, Felicity, works the counter, and she'll get Abbot for you."

"Cool, thanks."

"There are two keys on your ring," Jackson said. "If you don't go up the stairs right there," he indicated the door to the stairwell, "the hallway leads around to a door out the side of the building. We lock the door to the bar at closing and don't open in here until 11:00, so you won't be able to get out the front."

"Gotcha."

"You need anything else, lad? Room's okay and all?" Rolland smiled at him as he tried to suppress a yawn.

"I'm fine, Sir, thanks."

"Good, well, we'll see you in the morning then, and this young fellow and I will get back to work. He'll show you around some more tomorrow before you have a chance to get in much real trouble." He slapped Jackson's shoulder again and they all stood. Jackson grabbed the glasses to clear the table.

"Goodnight," Stiles yawned, and went to bed.


	2. Wednesday, June 18th, 2014

He woke the next morning ravenous and disoriented before he recognized his little room. It was only 8:00, so he had some time to get online and check messages from home before he rushed through a shower and got ready for the day. 

It was surprisingly freeing to get ready to go and realize that he didn't have anyone to report to and no one would be asking about his plans. He was to present himself at the book shop next door at 10:00, but he still had an hour and he could do anything he wanted with it. 

Of course, what he really wanted was breakfast, so he set out to see what the options were. 

Bearing in mind that Jackson was supposed to show him around some more before he just wandered off into greater London, he let himself out the side door, locked it behind him, and made his way to the street to see if he could see any cafes nearby. There were three, just within two hundred yards. He picked one at random and got himself an egg and bacon sandwich on a croissant and a hot chocolate. Stiles always felt like a kid ordering hot chocolate but he wasn't supposed to have coffee on top of Adderall and whenever he broke the rules and ordered it anyway the combination turned to a nervous explosion under his skin. Some lucky guys with ADHD could use any caffeine to help mellow them out, but somehow the chemical interactions in his brain didn't work like that.

He wandered up and down the street a little, looking in shop and restaurant windows and dodging the many, many other people already out and about that morning. Whitechapel appeared to be an insanely busy place. Coming from Beacon Hills it made quite a change seeing all those people, especially since it sometimes felt like all twelve of the people who lived in Beacon Hills were white, and that was not the case here. 

Stiles found himself finishing up the hot chocolate in front of one of the crazy vintage shops. There were lime green skinny jeans in the window and he wanted them desperately. He was trying to work out if Derek would consider it an abuse of debit card if he spent 80 pounds on secondhand clothes, even if they were amazing, when he realized it was almost 10:00 and had to hustle back up the street. 

The book shop, he discovered, was called Book and Candle, though there weren't actually any candles inside, just a great many books and a woman in her early thirties with curly purple hair and a surprising number of facial piercings. 

"Hi." Stiles walked up to the counter. "Are you Felicity?"

"Yeah." She raised a pierced eyebrow at him. 

"I'm Stiles Stilinski. I'm supposed to ask you to see Abbot?" 

"Right, the kid from California." There were four gas lamps behind the checkout counter, all burning a merry - and totally normal looking - yellow. Muggles in the shop, Stiles thought to himself, fly casual.

Felicity saw him notice the lamps and rolled her eyes at him. "Go through to the Paranormal Self Help section," she waved a hand towards the back of the store. "There's a spiral staircase back there. I'll let him know you're on your way and he'll open the trap for you."

"Thanks."

He wound his way through the stacks, passing sections called New Fiction, Mythology and Folklore, and Paranormal Erotica, (would Derek think he was abusing the debit card if he bought some Paranormal Erotica for Research Purposes?) before he reached Paranormal Self Help. There was a wrought iron spiral staircase, just like in Derek's loft or Raiders of the Lost Ark. No 'x's or blood on the floor though. 

He climbed the stairs, right through a hole in the ceiling; the trap door was indeed open. He emerged into a fussy kind of Victorian-looking parlor, with a couple of loveseats and armchairs upholstered in heavy brocade and little tables scattered here and there with dusty-looking plants on them. There was also a small four-person dining table in one corner with a heavy top and claws for feet. The chairs matched.

"Stiles, is it?" A very ordinary-looking man was clearly waiting for him. Super ordinary, in fact. Early forties, medium height, medium weight, mouse-brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and even, regular features. 

"Yes, hi. Are you Abbot?" Stiles extended a hand. 

"It's so nice to meet you." Abbot's face creased into a smile as they shook hands and that gave him a little more character. Stiles thought to himself that he'd probably be able to pick him out of a line up now. "Of course, I've talked with your mentor a little bit, Dr. Deaton, and I understand you're a crack hand at research. I'm under the impression that most of the doctor's strengths lie in the areas of earth magic?"

"Um, yeah, that's mostly what we've talked about so far." 

"Excellent. As I'm sure he told you, my style is quite different, so you should have lots to learn this summer. Come on through to the lab and I'll show you the set up." Abbot flipped the trap door closed and a blue light flared all around it. Stiles shot a look at him. "Oh, it's authorized access only up here. I just authorized you, so you won't need to check in with Felicity again, you'll be able to come and go freely. I should get you a key to the back door of the book shop, too." 

He led Stiles through a door on the opposite wall and Stiles immediately thought he'd been transported into Dr. Jekyll's laboratory. There were long counters lining the walls and four long lab tables with wheels locked in position lined up in the center of the room. Two of the tables were covered with dishes and herbs and jars and bunsen burners, with experiments clearly in progress. Glass laboratory equipment filled glass-fronted cabinets above the counters, and the cabinets below the counters appeared to be filled with books. 

There was another door next to the one they'd just come through, leading to a room beside the Victorian Parlor, Stiles supposed. Abbot gestured to it, "Store and sample room through there."

There were gaps in the cabinetry on the walls where windows should have looked out on the alleys on either side of the shop and the front to the street ahead of them, but the windows had all been blacked out. There were four deep double sinks, and Stiles could see gas hookups, like the ones in the chemistry lab at school. Lots of the cabinets had locks on them.

Abbot moved over to one of the sinks and filled an electric kettle. He set it on a counter and reached up to get teabags and mugs. 

"Well, there are, of course, lots of safety precautions we'll need to discuss before we really do any work, as well as some basic lab procedures, but to start with, let's get to know one another a bit." He gestured to a stool around one of the lab tables and Stiles pulled it out and sat down. 

"So, how's this going to work, exactly?" Stiles was looking around the room, trying to see everything at once. "Are you really busy with work and I'll get to help, or what? I mean, Dr. Deaton's our Emissary, but when he's not Emissarying he's a vet. Do you have a day job?"

"Being the Emissary is my day job, more or less. Your pack has had some upheaval in recent years, yes? Lots of new wolves, new Alpha?" Stiles nodded, in as much as all those people dying could be classified as 'upheaval,' it was more or less accurate.

"The Dyers have been in Whitechapel since the second King George, so they've been doing things the same way for a couple hundred years now. Basically, how this pack functions is pretty simple. We all tithe a portion of our earnings to the pack and Davy, one of Rolland's wolves, takes care of all that. As Emissary, I am a full-fledged pack member, but I don't tithe, instead, I get access to this lab, which, like the book shop and The Lamb are owned by the pack, and I'm paid a small retainer to be available to the pack whenever needed." The kettle started to whistle, and Abbot went through the motions of pouring out hot water and adding teabags. 

"From a practical standpoint, this mostly works out to putting wards on dwellings and being on call any time something strange is going on. A settled, strong pack like Rolland's doesn't often have people willing to try their luck, but from time to time I do come in handy in an emergency." One of the cabinets underneath the counter turned out to have a mini-fridge inside, and Abbot grabbed a jug of milk and a small pot of sugar and set them on the table so Stiles could doctor his own mug. 

"Much of my time is spent doing research, communicating with others in the supernatural community, and I also take work on the side," he gave a nod towards the Victorian Parlor. "I do consulting work out there, but no one is allowed in the lab except for you and me. And Rolland."

"So someone random could come to you and be like, 'hi, I think I've got gnomes in my plumbing,' and you would help them out, and if they're a pack member it's gratis and if not they pay?"

"Essentially. I'd hope they'd go somewhere else though. Gnomes are disgusting."

God, this was amazing. So often back home Stiles felt like they were all flying by the seats of their pants. Scott had no idea what he was doing, and Derek was barely better. He'd been relieved when he'd lost the Alpha powers and would only say that he never wanted them anyway. Trying to find out from Derek what a real pack was supposed to be like was basically asking him to revisit all his most painful memories, and even Stiles wasn't enough of an asshole for that. He supposed they could ask Peter, but even though his Evil seemed to be in remission since coming back from the dead, Stiles still didn't trust him. The guy liked screwing with them too much.

They probably should have found some way for Scott to come, too, and get Alpha lessons from Rolland. This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see how to run a real pack before they started trying to do it on their own, and so far, from what he was hearing, Beacon Hills seemed a hell of a lot more dangerous than London. 

"So, all that is the long way of saying that I will have work now and then, and you will find yourself washing lots of dishes and doing a fair amount of filing, but I want to know what you want to learn about." He jumped up and grabbed a thick notebook on one of the countertops. "Here, this is going to be your casebook."

Stiles flipped through the book; it was completely blank, the pages weren't even lined. "Anything you do, you write down in the front, exact calculations and everything. Any questions you have, anything you want to learn about, you write down in the back. For now you'll definitely have more questions on your list, but we'll get to them when we can. The notebook does not leave this room. When it's time for you to fly home I'll glamor it so you can take it on the plane, where it will not leave your side for an instant. Until then, it'll stay in your workstation." He waved a hand at the front corner of the room on the side closest to The Lamb. There was a clean section of countertop there. 

"So, your involvement in the supernatural began more or less a year and a half ago?" Abbot jumped up and moved around to another table, where he started measuring out different liquids from opaque jars. 

"Yeah. My dad's the Sheriff and there was a body in the woods outside of town." 

Stiles took him through the basics of his life since the day that everything changed. Derek had told him that Rolland already knew brushstrokes anyway, so he shouldn't feel bad if people asked what had been going on. Weirdly, Abbot was super interested in Jackson.

"So, how long had Alpha Hale had his Alpha powers when he bit Mr. Whittemore to turn him?"

"I mean, I wasn't there, and I've never actually talked to either of them about it, but we figure it wasn't very long."

Abbot wanted to back track and hear about Jackson seeking the bite and being turned in more detail so they went over it again. Stiles didn't have much more to add; at the time he'd been trying to help Scott not kill everyone and hoping that Derek wasn't some sort of paranormal serial murderer. Jackson hadn't been a very high priority until suddenly, he was. 

"Haven't you talked to Jackson about all this?" Stiles finally asked. He was finished with his tea and starting to fidget, but Abbot was flitting all over the lab firing questions at him and Stiles was having a hard time getting a word in edgewise.

"Oh, yes, of course, but it's so important to have as many perspectives as possible when dealing with something this rare."

"What do you mean?" Okay, so the whole kanima thing had gone badly, but Lydia had put it all in the bestiary she was building for the Hale-McCall pack. 

"You know, I've made a study of kanimas, since we heard that Mr. Whittemore would be joining our pack. Over thousands of years there have been a fair number of cases where the bite has gone wrong because the bitten doesn't have a strong enough sense of self. Of course, you'd expect that, humans being what we are. But I've only found four cases in history where a kanima has been successfully transitioned, including the Beacon Hills case. Were you aware of that? Of what a miracle you and your friends achieved?

"Well, initially I was for killing him, because of that very reason. It was Lydia, really, who saved him." Stiles had felt like a dick recently for voting so hard for the Dead Lizard Plan. At the time though, he didn't really see another option, and four of his father's deputies were dead.

"They're almost always killed. And there's been next to no research done on what the wolves who are saved are like afterwards."

"What do you mean? That was the point, right? Jackson accepted himself or found Oprah or whatever and now he's a werewolf, just like he wanted in the beginning." Stiles's guts were starting to squirm with this conversation. He tried to turn the dickishness down a little, seeing as how he was still making his first impression on this guy.

"Mr. Whittemore isn't just a regular wolf, he's more. As a turned wolf he should be slightly weaker than the born wolves, but he's right up there with Rolland's top three wolves on speed and strength. The real difference is that for the first few swipes of his claws after he shifts, he seems to have some sort of paralytic agent, similar to the kanima's. From what I've been able to tell it's much less debilitating and wears off much more quickly, but it is present for those first few swipes. This field of study is wide open and potentially very important."

Wow, Stiles suddenly understood how the guys felt when he'd been researching all night and had the twin lights of Dewey Decimal and battle in his eyes. Stiles could see where he was coming from though, if kanimas really were made much more often than they were saved.

"I don't know. I know that kanimas are supposed to be completely in the dark about what they're doing, but somehow Jackson's kanima gained some sort of consciousness. Maybe it's because I was following him around telling him that he was a murder lizard for days, or maybe it was something different about Jackson and his kanima. Maybe that's why he was able to transition."

"What makes you think he was gaining consciousness?" Abbot's eyes had snapped to Stiles with that revelation. 

“He was prepared to die, instead of continuing to be a kanima. After we stopped the second stage, or whatever it was. He was still mostly shifted, but he looked at us, or Derek, anyway, and knew that Derek was going to kill him, and he was okay with that. We could all see it in his face.”

"Fascinating." Abbot was staring at Stiles as if he could see the scene by osmosis. Stiles squirmed in his seat and tried to make eye contact with whatever was in the big glass jar on the counter nearest him. 

Just at that moment a timer went off and Abbot twitched and turned. Stiles used the distraction to grab his casebook and flip to the back. He pulled a pen from his pocket and started to work on the list of things he wanted to learn.

"So, I'm really interested in this anti-eavesdropping thing you've got going on over at The Lamb, and I assume here, too." 

Abbot gave him a measured look, but allowed the subject change.

\-----

When they finally wrapped things up around 7:00, Stiles was fading fast; jet lag getting to him again. Abbot clapped him on the shoulder and said that he had a few more experiments to set up to run overnight and he'd see Stiles the next day. He gave Stiles a key so he could let himself out; Felicity had gone home an hour ago.

It had been a long day of learning where in the lab everything was located, going over magical safety procedures, and learning how to clean lab equipment. One of the sinks was hooked up to a cistern that had holy water, no kidding. Whenever the water level started getting low, Abbot filled it back up and a priest came to bless it. Another, smaller cistern held water “that had never been through a pipe” and Stiles was under strict orders not to use any of it without express direction, as it was a pain in the ass to come by. The No Pipes water had to be dipped out of the container with a ladle though, so he wasn’t likely to forget and use it by accident.

It was kind of nice, going from work to dinner to home in a few easy steps. He entered The Lamb through the front door to see the lamps already burning yellow. Jackson and Rolland were behind the bar and more of the tables were filled than the night before. 

"Alright, lad?" Rolland asked as Stiles approached. He hauled himself onto a bar stool and tried not to yawn in the Alpha's face.

"Yeah, jet lag is hitting me again, I think." 

"Well, we'll get some dinner down you and then send you off to bed. Another night or two and you'll have adjusted."

Stiles ordered pie and chips for dinner again and Rolland waved him off to a nearby table with a Pepsi. He got out his phone and signed himself into the Skype messenger to check for anything from Scott and his dad. The pack had all promised to keep an eye on the Sheriff while Stiles was out of town, but he sent an email to Melissa McCall and asked her to do some random cabinet inspections while he was gone so his dad didn't become complacent about his sodium intake. 

Jackson brought his dinner by a few minutes later. "Everything alright?" He frowned when he saw Stiles on his phone. 

"What? Oh, yeah." Stiles closed out of the app and accepted his dinner. "Things have actually been pretty quiet for the last six months or so. Scott and Allison haven't even broken up since the winter."

Jackson almost smiled at that. "Oh, well, that's good then."

Just then someone slammed into the seat next to Stiles and someone else pulled out the chair opposite him. 

"You're the new kid, right? Jax's friend from California?" The curly haired blonde next to him looked so much like Erica for a minute that Stiles's heart clenched. Her eyes were blue though, and open, where even after the change Erica's brown eyes had been shielded with distrust.

"Yeah, Stiles." He wiped his hands and held out the right to shake. 

"Stiles, this is Alice Robson - we call her Robbie -" Jackson indicated the girl, "and Faru Mirza." The guy across from Stiles was slender, dark, and a few years older than them. "They're a part of the family, too." Jackson quirked a smile at him and then headed back behind the bar. 

"Sooooooo," Robbie leaned over towards him and batted her eyes. "Is California really like in the movies? Jax doesn't ever really talk about home. Do you all live in mansions and have drivers?"

"Haha, no." Stiles grabbed a chip to gesture with. "Jax was definitely the richest kid in our high school, him and his girlfriend, Lydia. He drove a Porsche and she drives a BMW, but they both did the driving themselves."

"Jax had a girlfriend?" Robbie's eyes widened to roughly the size of dinner plates. 

"Well, no." Now Stiles was stumble-talking. "I mean, they're like, best friends, but they were both so pretty and around each other so much that everyone just kind of assumed." He allowed himself to trail off and then stuffed a large bite of pie in his mouth to shut himself up. Jackson could hear their conversation if he wanted to and Stiles didn't accidentally want to say the wrong thing. Was Jackson in the closet about having been in the closet?

"What about your car?" 

"Um, well my dad is the Sheriff so I drive a used Jeep. A 1980 Jeep. Lots of kids don't have cars though."

"Your dad is a Sheriff? Like Rick from _Walking Dead_?" 

"Uh, sure. But, you know. Fewer zombies." Stiles rapped the table with his knuckles and made a mental note to ask Lydia if zombies were a thing. Aside from Peter.

"So you're here to study with Abbot?" the guy, Faru, put in. Obviously he knew nerd distress when he saw it. Stiles smiled at him.

"Yeah. Our, um, old boss is friends with Rolland from way back and he set it up." 

"Have you ever been over here before?"

"Nope. California isn't much like what Hollywood shows, so I guess London's not going to turn out to be much like _Sherlock_ , huh?" 

Faru laughed, "There are fewer criminal masterminds, anyway." 

Robbie nodded solemnly. "Most of the criminals are dumb as bricks."

Faru and Robbie turned out to be pretty cool. Faru was in college nearby studying Philosophy and Law and Robbie was "doing her GCSEs," which Stiles thought meant nearing the end of high school. Robbie lived with Faru's family and they acted like brother and sister. 

Jackson came over to deliver their dinners just as the door to the stairwell opened. Macy Dyer came through holding a dark complected little girl in a nightgown. Macy looked harried and nearing the end of her patience.

"Jax, thank god." She made her way over to the table and in one movement handed the little girl over and took some empty glasses from his hands. 

The little girl squealed in delight. "Uncle Jacky!" and kissed Jackson four or five times on his cheeks as she wrapped her little arms around her neck.

"What's this, Lovie? You should be asleep." 

"She's making me mad, Jax. Will you put her down for me?"

"'Course."

Stiles eyes felt like they were bugging out of his head. "This must be what going mad feels like," he whispered. Faru shot him a smile as Macy stomped off towards the kitchen. 

Jackson obviously heard Stiles, because he turned back to the table. "Stiles Stilinski, meet Melanie Dyer-Choudhuri." 

The little girl peered down at him from Jackson's arms with narrow eyes. Stiles stood and offered her his hand. "Nice to meet you."

Dark brown eyes clearly reddened by crying stared suspiciously at him from under short black ringlets. "Are you my uncle, too?"

"No, Lovie," Jackson told her. "Stiles is a friend of mine from when I was a kid, but he has a family back home in America. He's going to stay here for a few months though, while he learns things."

"Oh, okay." She leaned out of Jackson's arms and gave Stiles a smacking kiss on the cheek. "Uncle Jacky is my friend, too." 

"Yeah? I'm glad to hear that." Stiles was vamping here. When was the last time he'd talked to a kid?

"Do you like Princesses?"

"Sure." 

"Okay, we can play Princesses later." She turned back to Jackson and rubbed her forehead on his neck. "Uncle Jacky, I'm sleepy." 

"Okay, Lovie, let's say goodnight to Grandpa and then we'll go read a book, okay?"

"Can we have Twelve Dancing Princesses?" 

"Did you clean your teeth with your mum already?" The pair moved towards the bar and Rolland. Stiles dropped back into his chair with a thud.

Faru and Robbie smiled at him. Melanie leaned across the bar and gave Rolland another smacking kiss and then rubbed their cheeks together. She leaned back into Jackson and yawned and the two of them disappeared through the door to the stairs. 

Faru took another bite of his fish. "Jax lived upstairs with the Dyers for a while after he first came here. He looks after Mellie quite a lot."

"Oh." Stiles blinked. 

Robbie laughed, but looked a little sad. "Yeah, he tells her favorite princess story." She and Faru shot a look to each other. Stiles frowned in confusion and Faru took pity on him. 

"It's about a handsome wolf, who was very sad. An evil sorcerer casts a spell on him and turns him into a dragon and the wolf/dragon starts to hurt people even though he doesn't want to, but in the end he's saved by a beautiful princess."

"Shit." 

"Yeah." Robbie poked desultoriously at her vegetables. "He's never really told anyone what happened, aside from Rolland, I mean. But Mellie's repeated that story enough that people figure that's part of it." 

"Yeah. That's part of it." 

They made their way carefully back to some conversation after that, Stiles asked a little about the surrounding area and places he should go for breakfast. He knew Jackson was supposed to show him around at some point, but Jackson hadn't mentioned it, so maybe Stiles could look around a bit on his own without getting kidnapped by a rival pack or some kelpies or something. 

Finally, Faru nudged Robbie and told her they had to get home. He had studying to do, and she was supposed to work in the morning. Apparently, she was working for the summer in one of the many vintage shops in Whitechapel. 

"Is it the one with the lime green skinny jeans in the window?" Stiles had almost forgotten about them after a day in the lab, but his enthusiasm returned full force. 

"I don't think there are any in the window at the moment. It's a couple of streets away." 

"Okay." He deflated. Maybe he should straight-up ask Derek what the guidelines on the card were. 

He stood and stretched as well, then made his way to his own bed.


	3. Thursday, June 19, 2014 - Sunday, June 22, 2014

Stiles got into a routine over the next few days. He'd get up and find a cafe somewhere nearby where he could buy some breakfast, then wander around the neighborhood for a bit until it was time to head to Book and Candle. Felicity didn't get any friendlier and Abbot didn't get any calmer, but Stiles felt like he was figuring things out. He'd seen Faru once more, and saw Jackson in The Lamb sometimes, but he was spending a lot of time on his own. 

He had Sunday off and allowed himself to sleep in. When he woke at 9:30 he suddenly remembered he was supposed to put his linens out in the hall, so he raced through a shower and then hustled back to strip his bed. When he opened his door to shove everything out into the hallway, Jackson was leaning on the wall opposite his door with a huge basket half full of linens at his feet. He looked nearly asleep, but straightened up when Stiles dumped his things on top. 

"Hey, I know I'm meant to show you around and you've probably got laundry you want to do. After I get this stuff started I'm supposed to take Mellie for the morning, but if you don't mind the half-pint we'll take you to a laundrette. Laundromat." Jackson hefted the basket and started for the stairs.

"Sure, that sounds good. When should I be ready?" 

"We'll come get you in fifteen minutes."

"I also require breakfast!" Stiles called after him.

"We'll find you something."

True to his word, fifteen minutes later there was a quiet knock at about thigh height at his door. 

"Hello, Stiles," the little girl said when he opened up and snatched his laundry bag (also included in the Macy Dyer Basket of Amazingness, along with laundry soap.) "We're going to take you to the laundrette and also have egg sandwiches! And then we're going to play football in the park!" 

"That sounds great!" Stiles smiled at her. 

Jackson and Mellie led him to a laundromat a few streets away, farther than Stiles had gone on his own, and Jackson picked Mellie up to let her sit on the machine as Stiles loaded things up. She really liked watching the water rush in. She babbled at him cheerfully and he tried to keep asking questions to keep her talking while they moved to the benches in the front of the shop.

"Lovie, do you want to stay with Stiles or come with me to get the sandwiches?" He turned to Stiles, "I'm just going across the street, are you alright with her for a few minutes?"

"Uncle Jacky, I'm not a baby." Mellie sounded disgusted and Stiles used her distraction to nod.

"I know, Lovie, but Stiles is new here so we want to make sure he won't be afraid."

"Oh, well that's alright. I'll stay with him." 

"Thank you."

When Jackson left Stiles asked her about her friends and if she went to school. She said that she didn't go yet, but she was going to soon, and that Jackson said that school was very important for Princesses, even though he didn't go any more.

"Jackson doesn't go to school?"

"No, he has special extra-smart people he learns from now. They go to the library together."

"Do you go to the library a lot?"

"Yes, we go all the time. They have the best stories there."

"I know, I love the library."

"They have libraries in America?" Mellie sounded delighted.

"Of course they do!" Jackson was just coming through the door, but had clearly heard their conversation. "When we were little kids, Stiles's mum worked at the library and my nanny used to take me every Saturday to hear her read." Wow. Stiles barely remembered that himself. He had been unmedicated at the time and sitting through a public story time had been beyond him.

"Does your mum know lots of Princess stories?" How to handle this? Did Stiles tell a six year old that his mom had died when he was eleven? Would that freak her out? 

Before he could decide, Jackson answered for him. "Stiles's mum died a few years ago, but she knew lots of Princess stories and she told him all of them."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Mellie's dark eyes looked very grave. "My daddy died, too. It's okay to be sad and miss them sometimes."

"Yeah, it is." Stiles choked out. 

"Maybe after we play football Stiles will tell us one of his mom's Princess stories." Jackson put in. Mellie was immediately distracted and Stiles shot him a grateful look. 

After they finished their egg sandwiches, Jackson broke open his backpack and produced three coloring books and a pack of crayons. He set Mellie on top of a washer and the three of them colored and chatted until it was time for Stiles to stick all his stuff in the dryer. Stiles was delighted to see that Mellie's coloring book was a _Frozen_ one; Jackson had _Snow White_ and Stiles had generic amazon animals.

The dryer worked quickly, and soon Stiles was bundling clean clothes back into the bag while Jackson rounded up the crayons and a small werewolf. They set off again for the park and Mellie skipped ahead, leaving the two boys to walk side by side. 

"Faru said the other day that you watch her a lot." Stiles ventured. Jackson was so touchy and Stiles didn't want to step on a land mine and ruin their nice morning. 

"Yeah." Jackson cleared his throat. "Her dad died maybe six months before I got here. Mellie was just four. I had to live with Rolland for a while, get my feet under me, and after I was doing a little better, looking after Mellie was something I could do. For the family."

"She's a pretty cool kid." 

"Yeah." Jackson smiled. "She's, like, obsessed with princesses, obviously." Stiles laughed. "It makes Macy crazy because she thinks princess stories 'inherently victimize women and girls,' so I tell Mellie stories about me and Lyds when we were kids, where Lyds's a princess who always saves me." 

"God, Lydia would love to hear those stories."

"I think Mellie would die if she ever got to meet her and realized who she was; Princess Lyds is kind of her hero."

"I bet Lydia would come visit, if you asked her."

"Yeah, I know. I'm not, I don't know. I don't really want to see anyone from home."

They caught up with Mellie and each held a hand to cross the street. As soon as her feet touched the sidewalk she bolted ahead and started talking to a potted plant outside a small pharmacy. 

"Is it a problem? Me being here?"

Jackson was quiet for a minute and Stiles felt his heart start speeding up. 

"I thought it might be. When Rolland told me you were coming, I wasn't, I don't know. I was pretty upset for a couple of days. But it's been fine."

"Good." Stiles was surprised by how relieved he was, but the Jackson he saw with Mellie wasn't a guy he wanted to make feel uncomfortable in his own home. And now for a change of subject. "You have your own place now?"

"Yeah." Jackson was clearly glad the subject was changing, too. "It's a one bedroom a couple of streets that way," he waved his hand vaguely. "That's one of the reasons Mellie's been driving Macy crazy; she's mad I moved out. I've now lived on my own longer than I lived with the Dyers and she still melts down once a week or so because I'm not there to put her to bed." Jackson's voice was equal parts exasperated and pleased. 

Just then, Mellie reached the park gates and let out a squeal so high pitched a couple of birds fled from the nearby treetops. She ran through the gates and the boys lengthened their strides to catch up with her. 

Jackson threw the backpack down under a tree and dug a soccer ball out from under the crayons. 

"Mellie!" Once he got her attention he dropped the ball and kicked it in her general direction and she squealed and ran after it. Stiles laughed and dropped his clean laundry by the backpack and ran out to form a passing triangle with them. 

They passed around and warmed up randomly for a while, then made a goal with the backpack as one end and Stiles's laundry bag as the other. Stiles and Mellie formed a team and tried to score on Jackson. They were not successful. Eventually, the three of them collapsed.

"Next time I want to be on Uncle Jacky's team." Mellie decided. "He's too good at being a keeper." 

"You know who's a great keeper? Jackson's best friend from back home. That's probably why we couldn't score on him, Mellie. I bet Danny taught him." Styles said this without thinking and then suppressed a wince. Seemed like Jackson didn't want to talk about home with anyone here, and of course he had to bring it up.

Mellie rolled over and crawled to drape herself across Jackson's chest. "Is that true, Uncle Jacky? Did he teach you to be a good keeper?"

"Yeah, Danny's great. He mostly plays lacrosse, but I bet a lot of it carries over." He ruffled his hand through her curls.

"Can you ask him to come and teach me to be a keeper?"

"I don't know if he can come, Lovie, he might be busy this summer."

"Is he busy?" Mellie turned a minatory eye on Stiles.

"I, uh. I don't know." Jackson gave Stiles a look that said, 'congratulations, look what you did' and Stiles grimaced at him. 

"Maybe we could call him," she suggested.

"It's," Stiles looked at his phone, "4:30 in the morning there."

"He'd be asleep, Lovie." 

She didn't quite roll her eyes at them, but she gave a kind of growly sigh and dropped her head on Jackson's shoulder. 

They lay there for a minute just breathing and then Mellie crawled up so she was kneeling on Jackson's chest. Stiles wondered if the Dyers gave her talks about climbing on humans. That would definitely be painful for him, but Jackson didn't even flinch, just laid there with his eyes closed.

"Uncle Jacky!" She whispered.

"Niece Mellie!" 

"It's lunch time." Jackson's eyes snapped open and he surged up, knocking her off and then catching her before she could hit the ground.

"Why didn't you say something?" Jackson demanded over her laughter, as he stood up and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Stiles grabbed the backpack and his laundry bag and followed them home to The Lamb.

\-----

Jackson ducked into the laundry room when they got back to The Lamb and grabbed a linen set for Stiles. He and Mellie headed upstairs to deliver her to Macy and "chicken nuggets in animal shapes!" Which Stiles thought sounded fucking delicious.

He made up his bed, stacked the new towels on the dresser, and folded and put away his clean but slightly wrinkly clothes. Stiles wasn't this neat at home, but this room was roughly the size of a skateboard and he was going to have to keep things tidy or risk drowning in a crush.

There was a knock at the door just as he was finishing up. Jackson was leaning on the doorframe and now that Mellie was gone he looked tired again. He scratched up the hair on the back of his head. 

"So, Rolland said I was supposed to go over some dos and don'ts for family living in London with you and we haven't had a chance to do that yet. It won't take long, but do you want to get some takeaway and go back to mine? There's furniture there." The last part was said while eyeing Stiles's meager room.

Stiles hesitated, his old wariness of Jackson noting that there would not be a six year old witness to any fuckery.

"I have a Playstation."

Stiles grabbed his keys, "Lay on, MacDuff."

\-----

They got takeout Indian and walked the couple of streets over to Jackson's place. Jackson was quiet for the most part, talking a little about the neighborhood and saying that the park where they'd hung out earlier in the day was where the chapel that gave the neighborhood its name used to be, but that it was destroyed during the Blitz. 

Jackson was telling Stiles about his place on the third floor above a cafe when a short, dark haired man hailed them. Or more accurately, Jackson.

"Alright, Jax?

"Oh, hey, Aaron." Jackson sounded cautious.

"I was thinking about calling you, but I see you made other plans for the afternoon." Then suddenly Stiles was getting elevator eyed for the very first time and what. The. Fuck.

"Yeah, no, it's not like that. Stiles is just a friend."

"Does he need another friend?" Yeah, that was definitely lascivious eye fucking.

And now Jackson was laughing at Stiles's face, which, if he had to hazard a guess, was doing a repeat of the expression he'd worn when he'd woken up tied to a chair in the Argents' basement.

"Stiles is straight off the boat from suburban California, Aaron. You come on that strong you're just going to scare him off."

"Fuck you, I'm not scared!" Sometimes Stiles's mouth should not say things.

"Oh, okay. So should I eat this tikka masala by myself so you and Aaron can get to know each other better?" Jackson said all this with a straight face, but Stiles knew he was still being laughed at.

"False advertising, Jax. You know I'd at least-"

"Sorry, but I'm really hungry." Stiles needed this conversation to end.

"Me too, honey." Aaron was now leering at him.

"Maybe another time." Stiles grabbed Jackson's wrist and hauled him to the door next to the cafe. Aaron laughed and blew them a kiss as Jackson got his keys out.

As soon as the door opened Stiles was up the two flights of stairs and standing outside another door. Jackson quirked an eyebrow at him as he unlocked the door. Stiles slammed into the apartment and rounded on Jackson as soon as the door shut.

"What the fuck was that?"

Jackson looked genuinely confused. "What the fuck was what?"

"That!" Stiles flailed furiously. "Were you making fun of me for being bi or for being a dork?"

"What do you think happened down there?" Jackson's face was much more impatient looking with Stiles than it was with the six year old.

"You and your friend were mocking me, asshole!"

"Jesus Christ, Stilinski. Aaron teased you a little bit because you blushed like a maiden when he cruised you, but no one was mocking you. God, if this is how you react to people hitting on you-" Jackson cut himself off with a growl of frustration. 

"He wasn't hitting on me, you two assholes were making fun of me!"

"If you'd gone with him, he'd already have your dick in his mouth."

"What." Stiles squinted at Jackson. Where were his wolf powers that would let him know if Jackson had a steady heartbeat?

Jackson laughed and rolled his eyes, then shouldered past Stiles and headed for the little kitchen. He started unpacking the food and pulling plates down. 

"Aaron saw you were with me so he figured you were at least not a homophobe and tried for the blatant cruise. When he saw you flush up but didn't read any anger off you he figured he'd try his luck, even though he knew it was a long shot with me standing right there." Jackson went into a drawer to get some spoons to serve out the curry. "The light teasing was meant to open a door for next time you run into each other, not to make fun of you."

"He was actually hitting on me?" Stiles accepted a plate in a daze.

"Yeah." Jackson started to serve up the rice.

"But." Stiles looked down at himself in confusion. No, he was still a skinny dork. 

Jackson suddenly looked up with dawning comprehension. "You're still a virgin, aren't you?"

"Fuck you!" 

"Well, we can change that fairly quickly."

Now the confusion was back. "What?" This time he got his voice to rise at the end.

"You're actually kind of decent looking now. Grew a couple inches, stopped buzzing your hair, got all shouldery. If you want I can take you to a couple of clubs. Age of consent here is 16. I don't really know where to go for girls, but Faru would hook you up. Guys are easier though." 

Stiles just sort of stood there, confused, as Jackson dished up his food. 

"Don't go by yourself though, okay? Some of those guys are dangerous and Rolland'll kill me if you get jumped."

Stiles blinked for a while as the words attempted to make it through his slow mental processes and finally came back to himself as Jackson walked past him. "I use the table for studying. Get your food and we'll eat in front of the tv."

For the first time, Stiles looked around himself and noticed the apartment. Jackson had said on the way over that when he moved here the Whittemores had bought the building, with a bit of the trust from his birth parents. The cafe on the first floor and the two bedroom apartment on the second both paid rent, but Jackson had the third floor. 

It was small, but pretty nice. The door from the stairs opened right up into the living room, which was cozy with a dark brown, deep sofa and two fat armchairs. The galley kitchen was tucked behind a little breakfast bar, but had enough countertop for a reasonable person to cook. The little breakfast nook had a small four person table that was smothered with textbooks and notes. There was a bookshelf next to the table stuffed with a mix of school books and popular fiction. 

There were two doors leading off the living area, presumably to a bedroom and a bathroom. The windows were all dormers, excepting the one above the table in the breakfast nook, which Stiles realized must be dead front and center on the building, and the ceilings sloped on the edges of the room, but the walls were a warm cream and the furnishings were mostly snug reds and yellows. Thick brown carpets covered the hardwood floors. The whole place did feel, remarkably, like a den.

Stiles's stomach rumbled and he shook himself. He fixed a plate and then joined Jackson in the living room, setting his plate on the coffee table and sitting on the floor to eat. Jackson had turned on the tv, and they watched in silence for a while. There were lots of cars and some very loud guys being enthusiastic about them.

Was Jackson right, had Aaron actually been hitting on him? And if that was the case did that mean that the guys who messed with him at The Jungle back home were serious, too? Okay, not The Ladies, they weren't serious, but they also knew he was the underage son of the Sheriff. But he wasn't underage in London. 

Shit, would Jackson really take him to a club and help him find someone? What sort of qualifications did you look for in a one night stand for the purposes of V-card punching? Did he want a guy first? Was he a heteronormative dick if he thought that girls were less scary? That was inaccurate. Girls weren't less scary, Lydia and Allison were easily the two scariest members of the pack. Peter was scary in a different way. Girls were just, safer, somehow.

Jackson got his attention back by snapping off the tv. He cleared their empty dishes and put the leftovers in the fridge, grabbed a map from the bookshelf, and spread it over the coffee table. It showed the different boroughs of London and some of the tourist highlights. 

"Okay. This is our territory," he indicated the map. "We call ourselves Whitechapel, but we're technically Bethnal Green, Stepney, Whitechapel, and Wapping. Basically, east of the City, south of Hackney, and north of the river. Rolland doesn't want you going far from The Lamb unescorted until Abbot teaches you to recognize anyone plugged into the supernatural on sight, but after that you're safe in our territory."

"Okay, cool. I'll ask to go over that this week." Stiles did not even know that kind of magic was an option. 

"There are three packs in Central London: Whitechapel, Westminster, and South Bank. We all have treaties so technically no one should bother you. Realistically, if you go to Mayfair," Jackson tapped the map, "without a wolf and get picked up as someone supernatural and unattached, you may end up spending a couple of hours sitting in someone's office, waiting for Rolland to confirm that you are who you are and then they'll let you go."

"So the big, bad wolves of London are going to threaten me with bureaucracy?"

"Pretty much." Jackson nodded. "It's not like this up north, but down here there are too many people to play fast and loose with supernatural politics. South Bank is the newest London pack and they've been there for two hundred years. The three packs together keep order and police themselves and each other. It's not like the mafia, even if some of the others are dicks. No one wants to start shit in the city, and ultimately, we have each other's backs."

"But it's not like that everywhere in the UK?" Stiles was studying the map carefully, trying to fix boundaries in his head.

"Same as the US, I expect. Packs in New York don't start shit either, it's just when you're out in the country that things go wrong." 

Something in Jackson's voice made Stiles turn to look at him. "Like what?"

"You remember Robbie, right?"

"Sure."

"Yeah. She's the sole survivor of her original pack. They were wiped out when she was about eight. She's from Northern England, but I don't remember exactly what town."

"Fuck."

"Yeah. Everyone knows, so it's okay for me to mention it. That's why she lives with the Mirzas, though. Faru has three older brothers, but they always wanted a girl. When Rolland brought her home she moved in with them."

"How did Rolland know her?"

"That's something else we have to talk about. So, all three of the packs in London have land up north where they do their full moon runs. Robbie's pack was small, but he knew her folks somehow through that." 

"So you're all gonna ditch me to go howl at the moon in three and a half weeks?"

"We usually split the pack. Rolland always goes, but half the pack stays here and half goes up north. Our grounds are in Northumberland, and they're pretty remote."

"Cool."

"It's pretty fun, actually." Jackson blushed with genuine enthusiasm. "Once a year, each pack takes everybody up, and the other two cover their territory. Full pack runs up there with all of us howling in the wind are pretty amazing." 

"Will there be a full pack run while I'm here?" 

"Nah, we're up in November this year. It's going to be cold as fuck," he smiled as he said it, so Stiles assumed it wasn't a real complaint. "I'm up next moon."

Jackson shook himself and focused back on the map. "So, you're basically safe in central London. Plenty of the area isn't actually claimed, so no one will take you into custody there for wandering alone, but Rolland would prefer you have a wolf with you if you leave our territory."

Stiles nodded, as that seemed reasonable. And he didn't want to get lost or mugged.

"The City of London is full of stockbrokers, warlocks, and warlock stockbrokers. Do not go to clubs in the City and do not, under any circumstances, sleep with a stockbroker, warlock, or warlock stockbroker."

"Why's that? Is there bad blood?"

"Nah, they're just dicks." Jackson flashed him a smirk.

"Probably not all of them." Stiles fake scolded. Okay, so he was a little charmed at the warning. 

Jackson rolled his eyes. "I have done extensive research on this subject. Trust me when I tell you that my data pool was large enough to get accurate results." Jackson's voice was dry, but there was humor there, too.

"Well, if you insist." Honestly, he couldn't think of any situation where a stockbroker or warlock would want to nail his pasty bones, but it was kind of nice of Jackson to act like it was a possibility. Shit, he had just thought the words, 'nice of Jackson.'

"And, I cannot emphasize this enough: stay out of the northern suburbs."

"What's wrong with them?"

"There's a pack up there run by a crazy old lady Alpha who hates Rolland. She's also not too fond of gays, bitten wolves, humans, or anyone not white. There's shit all to do in the northern 'burbs anyway, so just don't bother."

"Sounds good. Anything else?"

Jackson thought for a moment. "Buying kebobs from a street vendor is never going to be as good a decision as you think." He paused, clearly going over some mental list. "And stay away from the sausage sarnies, unless you know Macy's made them. They sound delicious, but in reality not so much."

Stiles stretched and nodded. "All rules I can live with. Hey, is the Underground like in Neverwhere?"

"I don't know what that is, but don't go on the Underground without a wolf. Robbie's been mugged like four times. Attempted muggings." His face creased open in a smile. "I was meeting her the third time, but running late. Came up just at she kicked the third guy in the balls, the other two were already down. She let me stand guard while she got the cops."

"It's really that dangerous?"

"Nah, but Rolland's all mother-hen about Derek, and by extension, you. I think he was secretly in love with Derek's mom, back in the day."

"But they were both Alphas, living on opposite ends of the world!" 

"Don't clutch your pearls, Stilinski, it was like thirty years ago." Okay, so Stiles had kind of grabbed his chest, and he did think that would be tragically romantic, but Rolland had gotten married and had Macy and Talia had gotten married and had five kids, so it probably wasn't Romeo and Juliet over here. Jackson was smirking again, time for a subject change.

"Are we done talking? I haven't played any console in like a week, dude." 

"Yeah, let's fire it up."

Stiles hopped up on the couch and squirmed around to get comfortable. "Oh my god, dude, this couch is amazing! I'm going to examine it later for supernatural enhancements in comfortableness."

Jackson looked over and laughed at him, all sprawled out. "You look like a wolf right now. You're about to walk in a tiny circle three times and curl up with your nose under your tail, aren't you?"

"That's 'cause this couch is seriously more comfortable than my bed at The Lamb."

"Well sit up. What'd you reckon? Madden?"

"Ugh, if you insist. Scott always crushes me a this; it's like the one game he's better at than me."

Jackson just smirked.

\-----

They played for a couple of hours, until Jackson checked his watch and got up. "I've got a shift on at The Lamb tonight. Let me change and then we can walk over there." 

Stiles shut down the electronics and slid his phone out of his pocket and started to fire up Skype to check for texts when he realized he wasn't on wifi. He looked up to see Jackson coming back into the room, pulling his work t-shirt down over his bare abdomen. 

"You don't shave any more." The words left Stiles's mouth before his brain could stop them. 

"What?" Jackson clearly didn't get it for a moment and then comprehension dawned over his features. "Oh, this?" He pulled the hem of his t-shirt up a little, showing off the trail of brown hairs that gathered on his flat belly and disappeared into the sauntering jeans. And not inconsequently showing off the flat belly, too.

"Sorry. Brain filter was offline." All the blood in Stiles's body was in his face, ears, and neck, which could only be good because it was preventing other reactions, such as those related to hard abdominal muscles on a hot guy for instance.

Jackson smirked and scratched that belly hair in an unnecessarily suggestive manner before dropping both the shirt and the pose and grabbing his keys and wallet. "I don't swim competitively any more, so there's no reason."

Stiles stood and got ready to go as well. "Yeah, I think Mellie said you're studying with tutors these days?"

"Yeah. I didn't really feel like school was good for me, and was able to get Rolland to agree. I still swim at the community center a couple of times a week, and I run and play football, well, soccer, but it's all for fun. Nothing competitive." Gone was the smirking calendar boy from a minute ago, Jackson almost looked self-conscious. 

"But you're, like, Mr. Competitive." Stiles followed Jackson down the stairs and even in the dim light could see that Jackson's neck and the backs of his ears were bright red.

"Yeah, well. All that competition shit was making me crazy and after everything. After everything that happened, I just decided that I was going to take a break from it."

They popped out on the street and Jackson pulled the door shut behind him. Stiles really did not know what to make of Jackson when he was all weird like this. Best to change the subject and keep talking. 

"So you do tutoring, work out, work at The Lamb, and hang with the pack? Family!" Stiles shot a look around, but there was no one near them. 

"Smooth, Stilinski." Stiles couldn't see the eye roll, but he could hear it. "Yeah. Faru and Robbie are the closest ones to our age, and I see Macy and Mellie all the time. Faru's quite a nice guy, really. He joined the queer football team I play on, even though he's not queer, though with his workload at school he's had to give it a pass recently."

"Wow." For a moment an incautious thought passed through his brain, wondering if Scott would do that for him. It was ridiculous, though. Stiles had come out to Scott when they were fourteen and after he'd realized it wasn't the beginning of a conversation wherein Stiles would declare his love for dick in general but Scott's in particular, Scott had been completely fine with it.

"Yeah. No one else in the family is on the team, but when I heard about it and Rolland cleared me to be around non-family, I really wanted to do it. Was a bit nervous though. Faru heard me whinging about it to Macy and joined without even telling me."

"That's really cool of him." 

"Yeah, the family is pretty great." Jackson had his hands in his pockets, head down, a soft smile on his face.

That was exactly what Stiles wanted to do with the Hale-McCall pack. Jackson was a hot mess when he left for London in the spring of their sophomore year, and here he was, a little over a year later, happier than Stiles had ever seen him. 

Stiles and Scott had to figure out how to manage the pack like that. How to make the pack a safe place so Derek would stop blaming himself for everything, And also they needed some kind of girlfriend vetting process when it came to him. He wasn't sure if Peter was fixable; Peter gave every indication of enjoying the fact that he was cryptic and creepy, but maybe they could help Isaac. He was kind of a dick, but he had come by that dickishness fairly. 

For real though, Isaac was probably going to be a possessive douchewolf over Scott by the time Stiles got back. 

Stiles was so lost in thought that he hardly noticed when Jackson let them in the side door of The Lamb. 

"You having dinner down here tonight?" Jackson asked at the back door to the kitchen. 

"Oh, yeah." Stiles looked up. "Probably hang out in my room for a bit and check messages, but then I'll be back down."

"Okay. See you later."

"Yeah. Hey, thanks for the takeout and the Playstation. And the safety talk." Jackson gave a sharp nod and clapped Stiles on the shoulder. 

"No worries. If you want an escort anywhere, let me know, okay? Even if I'm busy I might be able to find someone else for you."

Stiles smiled, and they headed their separate ways.


	4. Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Stiles walked over to The Lamb with Abbot after they cleaned up to meet Faru and Robbie for dinner. They had switched from talking about shielding and eavesdropping spells to talking about books at the back door of Book and Candle.

"It's so dumb," Stiles was saying as they walked into the bar. "I've had _Smoke and Mirrors_ for months and every time I go to pick it up, I'm like, 'oh, well, short stories, I don't know' even though I had the same problem with _Fragile Things_ and when I finally read it I was blown away."

He happened to be looking at the bar when he said it and saw Jackson's head come up at the sound of his voice. He was halfway to a smile when his gaze slid past Stiles and landed on Abbot and all expression dropped off his face. Stiles turned to look at Abbot, but he was wearing his usual non-expression.

"Well, I haven't gotten to _Smoke and Mirrors_ myself, but did you read the "Monarch of the Glen" novella at the end of _Fragile Things_? It was a continuation of _American Gods_."

"Yeah, I thought it was great. I totally want to name a dog Mr. Wednesday now." Stiles looked back at the bar, but Jackson was gone and the door to the kitchen was swinging open for Rolland to come through.

"Have you been any of those American places in _American Gods_?"

"Yeah, actually, it's weird, but my dad's parents were all Polish-in-Chicago and we went out there when I was like, eight. We all drove up to the Wisconsin Dells as a mini-vacation and went to The House on the Rock."

"And did the book describe it accurately?"

"It was so weird. I was just a kid, so I don't remember all the details, but there were thousands of creepy-ass dolls staring at me. I had nightmares for weeks afterwards. My mom was pissed."

Abbot laughed as they reached the bar. 

"Alright, fellas?" Rolland asked. "How's the studying going, then?"

"Very well," Abbot answered. "The good doctor Deaton did not over-sell Stiles's research capabilities."

Stiles flushed up and tried for a distraction. "My list of things I want to learn is about four times longer than my list of things I know. It's also growing much faster."

"Well, that's as it should be," Rolland smiled. "You're meeting Faru and Robbie, right, lad?" He nodded towards the back right corner of the bar and when Stiles looked he saw the two of them already in a booth. Stiles ordered quickly and Rolland poured his drink so he could take off and sit with them. Abbot and Rolland slid down to the far side of the bar to talk quietly. 

"Hello, all." Stiles greeted them as he slid into his side of the booth. They were sitting on the same side and Robbie was draped all over Faru's shoulder. He didn't seem to have noticed.

"Hey," Faru smiled at him. "So you've been here a week, what do you think?"

Robbie's eyes popped open, "Have you been anywhere cool yet?"

Stiles laughed. "I think it's kind of amazing, seeing what a well-established family" (the lamps were yellow at the moment) "looks like. And the only places I've been are here, the Book and Candle, the park, laundromat, and Jackson's. And various coffee shops where I have purchased a variety of sandwiches."

"We should do something this weekend!" Robbie bounced and clapped her hands. 

"Touristy shit or fun shit?" Faru asked.

"Both? I dunno. Stiles, are you working this weekend?"

"Abbot says that barring plumbing gnomes I'll have at least Saturday off, maybe Sunday as well." Stiles almost flinched when he realized what he'd said, but then decided that any mundane humans that heard him would probably think he was joking anyway.

"I'm working in the morning Saturday, but I finish at 1:00 and Faru studies basically all the time, so he can take a break whenever."

"So you want to meet here in the afternoon and then go do things?" Stiles asked as Jackson approached with three plates.

"Cool!" Robbie clapped. "Hey, Jax, you want to hang out on Saturday?"

"We've got that thing Friday night," he gave the table a significant look. Stiles had no clue what he was talking about. "And I've got Mellie in the morning." 

"We can end up at Vibe if you want," Faru offered.

"I can go one weekend without getting laid," Jackson rolled his eyes.

"Really?" Robbie raised her eyebrows skeptically as she slid most of her veggies onto Faru's plate. "Because it would be the first weekend since I've know you -"

"Alright, Robson, I'm in. Just, stop talking." Jackson laughed and walked away. He leaned over the bar and grabbed a bussing tray to start making the rounds. Leaning over things was good; that was one goddamn muscular ass. Stiles turned back to the others and saw Faru smirking at him. Robbie, thankfully, was oblivious.

"So," Stiles asked, "touristy shit or fun shit?"

They batted ideas around for the rest of dinner but didn't come to any conclusions before Faru said that he really did have to go and get a few more hours of studying in. Faru shook Stiles's hand and slapped his shoulder and Robbie kissed him on the cheek before they took off. 

Stiles sat at the table a little longer, thumbing through Skype and email and sending messages to his dad and the pack while he finished his soda. There was nothing new from Scott, but Lydia had sent a detailed report of a run-in with a small omega family that had just been passing through. From her description there was no trouble at all, they'd come to Scott straight away to ask permission to cross his territory and left without incident, but she was thinking of mounting a new push for a pack house and official headquarters, as Melissa McCall worked hard enough and didn't need that shit showing up on her front porch. 

Stiles thumbed an email back in support of her position, remaking his point that a pack made up of teenagers, bitten wolves, weirdos, and Derek, might look a little more fearsome if, when you had business with the Alpha, you didn't have to ask his mom if he was finished with his homework.

They'd had this battle back in the spring already. After growing up almost paycheck-to-paycheck, Scott had a natural aversion to spending money that was not easily overcome. Derek and Peter had explained the difference between their family money and the pack's money and said that since this was the Hale-McCall pack now, they should have access to the old Hale funds, but Scott was loathe to spend it rebuilding the Hale House. 

Lydia and Stiles argued that a grown-up headquarters gave them some additional legitimacy they were sorely lacking at the moment. Derek and Peter had abstained from the vote on grounds of past trauma (Peter had walked out in the middle of the meeting, so they'd called it abstaining and moved on.) Isaac and Allison had said they'd agree with Scott, and Scott wasn't prepared to spend the money yet.

Stiles just knew that his whole fall was going to be fighting this fight again.

Finally, Stiles clicked out of everything and got up to go. Jackson was approaching with the bussing tray and started to gather the dinner dishes.

"Everything okay?"

"What? Oh, yeah. Just. Lydia and I are trying to bend Scott to our will and he's proving annoyingly intractable."

Jackson raised his eyebrows at Stiles.

"It's nothing serious, just this argument we had all spring, Lydia's thinking about reopening it in my absence so I was sending her some talking points."

Jackson nodded. "Can I have a word?"

"Sure." Stiles looked towards the bar where the lamps were still burning yellow.

"Let me get this back to the kitchen, then I'll come up?"

"See you in a minute."

\-----

It really was just a minute. Stiles had just kicked his shoes off when there was a knock at the door. He leaned over and opened it and Jackson came in. Stiles sat crosslegged on the bed with his back to the wall and Jackson leaned against the chest of drawers.

"Sorry if that was cryptic downstairs before, about 'we have something to do on Friday night,'"

"Oh yeah! What was that about?"

"Pack meetings are at new moon here. That's Friday."

"Oh. Am I supposed to go?"

"Yeah, Rolland wants to introduce you to everyone at the beginning. There's nothing dire on at the moment, so he says you can stay for the full meeting if you want, get to know everyone a bit."

"Cool. Are the meetings downstairs?"

"Yeah. Starts at midnight."

Stiles hooted. "Seriously? The pack meeting in The Slaughtered Lamb starts at midnight on the new moon?"

"I know it sounds dramatic," Jackson rolled his eyes, "but the meeting is at midnight so that Rolland doesn't have to close the bar any earlier to his regular customers; it's not usually on a Friday night. It's at new moon because half the pack is together in Northumberland every full moon anyway."

"I guess that makes sense. Still, your Whitechapel pack has a bit of a flair for the dramatic."

"Hey, no one in our pack is having an epic love affair with the princess of the oldest hunting family in the country. Talking of dramatic."

"I told you; they're cool now. No breakups for six months."

Jackson raised his eyebrows and waited until Stiles finally broke. He rolled his eyes and reached out so he could knock his knuckles against the wood of his nightstand. Jackson laughed.

"I've got to get back downstairs. See you Friday if not before, yeah?"

"Yeah. Night."

"Night."


	5. Saturday, June 28, 2014

The Pack Meeting started promptly, just after midnight. Stiles had snagged a chair at a table out of the way, somewhere he could sit with Jackson, Robbie, Faru, and Macy without being in the center of the room. 

There were about thirty pack members present, all told, although Faru said that one of his brothers was doing a summer session at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and so he wasn’t there. Of course, the kids weren’t there either, it being so late. 

Rolland started the proceedings by introducing Stiles, who stood and waved awkwardly. Rolland asked everyone to please introduce themselves at the end of the meeting and to keep an eye out for Stiles while he was in town for the summer. He gave a general, “everyone’s fine” update, and then brought Davy up to give a basic financial report on the pack. 

While he was talking, Macy leaned over and hissed in Stiles’s ear that pooled money was used for the good of the pack. Davy’s education, for example, had been paid for out of the common fund, because he’d known he wanted to manage the money for the pack. Property taxes, utilities, and upkeep for pack held real estate also came out of the fund. 

You could borrow from the pack too, if you wanted and had a good plan, and the interest was either very small (for business ventures) or non-existent (for things like education.) Stiles wished Scott was there to hear the explanation of how pack money worked. 

Abbot gave an update as well, cautioning people to stay away from the Thames south of Mayfair’s territory, as there was something in the water that the Mayfair Emissary was still figuring out. Stiles hadn’t heard anything about that yet, so he was very interested, but Abbot didn’t give many details. 

Afterwards the party seemed to break up fairly quickly. A few of the younger couples swarmed him first to introduce themselves, then hurried out to dispense with babysitters; half of one of the couples was Faru’s oldest brother. There were several older members of the pack who had sat in the back and came over to shake hands with Stiles, including Brian, Rolland’s second. He and Macy peeled off after a minute though, and were soon deep in conversation. 

Faru’s brother Hakem came over to say hello, too; it turned out he did IT for the pack and offered to help Stiles with anything he needed. A few more people came over to introduce themselves, but it was nearing one in the morning by then, so most everyone was headed out. Stiles ended up helping Jackson and Macy collect the last of the glasses spread all around the bar and load the dishwasher, before Rolland locked up and called it a night. 

\-----

They ended up all meeting outside The Lamb at 2:00, where they agreed to take the Tube into the City so that Stiles could see some of the tourist spots, though they weren't planning on doing any tours. 

"You've got a lot to answer for, Stilinski." Jackson began as they set off.

"What'd I do this time?" Stiles's head snapped up.

"I spent the morning with a six year old who wanted to know everything there was to know about Danny Mahealani. I had to show her photos on my phone and explain times zones so she'd get why we couldn't call him."

"Why don't you call him? I know I don't really know much about your friendship, but dude, if you called and offered him your couch I bet he'd be here before you could blink."

"You're right, you don't know shit about our friendship." Suddenly Stiles could feel the tension radiating off of Jackson and Robbie and Faru walking in front of them tensed as well. He wondered what emotions they were smelling.

"I may not know your friendship, but dude, I was there in ninth grade when you beat up two juniors for calling Danny a fag, okay? I was there in the locker room when you glared at anyone who acted uncomfortable around him. That circle of protection carried over to the other gay kids, you know; nobody got bullied for that at BHHS because none of the bullies wanted to deal with you if you found out about it. Danny defended your ass way past anyone else last year when you were spiraling. I'm pretty sure there's nothing you could do to make him not want to see you."

Stiles shot a look to the side and saw the muscles in Jackson's jaw clenched tight and unresisting. Werewolves should not grind their teeth.

"He knows." Jackson finally gritted out. "After that last lacrosse game. He knows everything that happened, everything I did. He wouldn't want to see me."

Goddamn London for being so big. Stiles wasn't finished with this conversation, but he needed to use real words and not speak in euphemism. Just then they reached the Tube station and everyone was taken up with showing Stiles how to get an Underground card. By the time they got on the train, Robbie was hanging off Jackson's arm complaining about assholes who thought fedoras were still cool. Faru just looked sad.

They ended up just walking around near the Tower of London and London Bridge. Stiles was excited to see the British Museum, too. He had definite plans to return when he had a longer day. It was still pretty cool to see the steps though. He wanted to dance up and down them, like Richard and Door, but felt a bit self conscious with New Jackson. He still wasn't sure where the boundaries were.

He steered clear of Jackson a little, since his spectacular fuck up about Danny. He mostly hung out with Robbie, who, in spite of having lived in London for almost ten years, was still about as country mouse in the city as Stiles. Robbie even went to bat for him about the double decker bus ride.

They found an Italian place for dinner, since Stiles was more or less living on pub food, and after they ordered he remembered that he'd wanted to ask Jackson about running paths near The Lamb.

"I'm working on my," he paused and looked around, "visualization exercises, and Abbot thinks I may be solid on that in another week or so, but if I keep eating Macy's cooking every night and don't start running, Finstock is going to kill me when I get back to California." 

"I run a couple of times a week and the whole loop stays in the neighborhood. I can come get you Monday morning if you like, show you the route." Jackson tore a breadstick in half. 

"Who's Finstock?" Robbie put in, stealing the breadstick right from Jackson's hands.

"Lacrosse coach, gym and Econ teacher." Jackson explained.

"Yeah, but what you have to know about him is that he's insane," Stiles added, then turned to Jackson. "You know for finals last year his pep talk included quotes from not only Braveheart and Apocalypse Now, but also, weirdly, Toy Story 3?"

Faru laughed. "This guy sounds brilliant." 

"He's a slave driver," Stiles grumbled. "If you want to play lacrosse you have to run cross country in the fall and do winter track. If I come back slower than I left he'll be inspirational at me. But in, like, a really focused and disturbing way. He's like the human equivalent of those 'Demotivational Posters' you see online." 

"He really is kind of nuts," Jackson agreed, "But a lot of his weird, you earned."

"What? I'm the most normal person of all of my friends!" Of course, then Stiles finished the thought in his head with 'except Danny' and by looking at Jackson, he could tell that was going through his head, too.

Jackson grimaced and Stiles changed the subject in a way that was, in retrospect, disappointingly flaily.

"So what's this club we're not going to because Jackson doesn't need to get laid?"

Faru laughed. "Vibe. It's back home in the neighborhood. It's the only club Robbie can get into that has straight guys for her, straight girls for me, and gay guys for Jax. It's pretty terrible, but if the three of us want to go out together it's basically our only option."

Robbie rolled her eyes, "The boys can get in much better places than I can. Apparently, I look twelve."

"In a couple of months you'll both be eighteen and then we can go to clubs where I won't feel like a pervert." Faru pointed out.

"Jax can already get into those clubs. He never gets carded." Robbie wrinkled her nose, but then brightened as the waitress brought their pasta.

Stiles expected an explanation from Jackson along the lines of his big standard for why he got away with everything, "I'm everyone's type" but all he did was smirk at Robbie and steal a mushroom off her plate.

\-----

They didn't end up going to the club. Instead they went back to Jackson's place to watch movies. The three wolves all piled onto the couch, leaving Stiles pouting in one of the chairs. 

"You have to have your werewolf puppy pile? That couch is my one true love, you know. You can't keep us apart forever!"

Robbie and Faru immediately shot looks to Jackson, who clearly didn't get what they were upset about for a minute. 

"Uh, sorry. Was that speciesist or something?" Stiles said way worse shit than that to Derek and the most he ever did was revert to default; growling and threat-making.

"Oh, shit." Jackson looked over to Stiles. "My place isn't eavesdropping shielded, sorry, I forgot to tell you. I got permission from Rolland for the initial talk, but technically we're not supposed to say anything supernatural here. I mean, it's more precautionary than anything, but they're the rules."

"Why isn't your place shielded? That was seriously, like, what Abbot used to describe as his first responsibility to the pack, shielding people's homes." 

Jackson looked like he'd rather be anywhere else, so Faru stepped in. "Jax and Abbot don't get on. He doesn't want Abbot in his territory and Rolland respects that."

"Why don't you like Abbot? I mean, yeah, he's a little intense, but -" Stiles cut himself off when Robbie gave a sharp shake of the head. And yeah, Jackson did look like he was about to crawl out of his skin, but what was going on?

Stiles rubbed his face with his hands and looked up again. "Look, I know there's lots of shit you don't want to talk about, but I work with this guy every day. Is he dangerous? What's the deal?"

"It's not -" Jackson looked helplessly at the two other wolves, but then seemed to give up. "I just don't like him, okay? He finds this whole kanima thing 'fascinating' and I'm not like, incredibly psyched to talk about my worst memories with some creepy mad scientist."

Jackson was staring off to the side, head in his hand propped on the armrest, not making eye contact with anyone. Robbie scooted closer on her cushion and wrapped her arms around Jackson's right arm, ducking her head to rest it on the ball of his shoulder. Faru reached over her and squeezed the back of Jackson's neck, then left his hand there.

"But Rolland is cool with you having an unshielded apartment?" Rolland seemed the picture of conscientious Alpha, and while it wasn't a large security breach, it was a gap.

"Rolland caught him in my room in the Dyer's apartment at The Lamb one day, trying to lift hair samples from my sheets. He called me in and I told him about all the questions and everything and he forbid Abbot from asking me about the kanima or any powers or experimenting on me in any way. I moved out a few days later. I don't want Abbot anywhere near here."

"Fuck." Yeah, Abbot was a little intense, but that was full-on creepy. Like, find a mandated reporter creepy.

"He's asked you about Jax, hasn't he?" This came from Faru, whose hand was still on Jackson's neck, thumb swiping back and forth over the hairline.

"Yeah. Basics, mostly. How you sought the bite, rejection symptoms, if I had any theories about why you were able to transition."

Jackson laughed, but not like something was funny. "I knew he would do that." 

"I didn't say much and I won't say anything else. I didn't realize he was like, so creepy to you about it."

"God, I wish I could still get drunk." Jackson scrubbed his hands through his hair.

Faru stood up and stretched. "Go wash up and get some blankets. I go down the street and get a couple of ciders. We can't get drunk, but we can drink. We'll puppy pile" he shot a look at Stiles, "on the couch and watch something funny."


	6. Sunday, June 29, 2014

It was definitely morning, there was light shining on his face, but it was coming from the wrong direction. Stiles had a small headache, but honestly, he was warm and snug and more comfortable than he usually was in his narrow bed at The Lamb.

Also, he could hear noises, which he shouldn't be able to do, his room was soundproofed. And someone nearby was making coffee.

"Hey, are you awake? Your breathing changed. I've got to get over to The Lamb." 

"What's happening?" Stiles sat up and rubbed his face. He was still at Jackson's, and had been asleep on the lovely couch. There was a blanket puddled around his waist and a pillow under where his head had been.

"We watched movies, it got late, you were a little funny on cider and fell asleep on the couch."

The waistband of his jeans was digging into his stomach. Goddamn sleeping in clothes. "What timesit?"

"Almost nine. Come on, get up, I've got laundry this week and three rooms to clean on top of it."

Stiles stood, stretched, and staggered towards the bathroom. He peed through his morning wood, never an easy task, then washed his face and hands. Those ablutions would have to hold him until they got home and he could shower. He emerged to see Jackson folding up the blanket he had slept under. 

Jackson nodded towards the kitchen. "There's a cup of coffee on the counter for you."

"Oh, shit. Thanks, I mean." Jackson looked at Stiles like he was a crazy person. "I can't have coffee, because of the Adderall. I'll take my pill when we get back to The Lamb and if I have coffee on top of that I'll be like, psychotically nervous for the rest of the day."

"Oh. Huh. Well, more for me, then." Jackson snatched up the pillow and took the linens through to his bedroom. Stiles got himself a glass of water and found his shoes. Once Jackson had used Stiles's coffee to top off his travel mug, the two of them set off for the pub. 

They parted ways at the back staircase and Stiles hurried through a shower so he could use the old towels before stripping his room to add to the basket in the hallway. He got dressed and sat crosslegged on his naked bed to check his messages, then thought about what he'd learned last night. 

Stiles needed to have a conversation with Jackson, that much was plain. That conversation needed to take place somewhere private and shielded, and he wasn't going to do it in this room. What was more; Jackson deserved to have a warded home, just like all the other members of the pack. 

Stiles grabbed his phone and his keys and headed next door.

\-----

Stiles and Abbot had looked a little at shielding magic already; as far as priorities went it was right up there with the visualization exercises he needed so he'd be able to recognize werewolves and anyone else plugged in to the supernatural on sight. He was ready to fully go after it now. 

Abbot was there when Stiles arrived, checking some experiments and puttering around the lab. Stiles announced his plan of being able to shield a pack member's home by the end of the day and if Abbot guessed his intentions, he didn't let on. 

Stiles grabbed three references and then set himself up with his casebook in his corner of the counter. He drew out a rough floor plan of Jackson's apartment (he hadn't seen the bedroom, so he had to make some guesses) and sketched up a plan of how he would shield the place. 

Around 7:00 he was startled when Abbot cleared his throat right behind Stiles. "I'm headed home. You alright here?"

"Yeah, actually, I think I'm ready for a dry run somewhere, see if I got this. Do you know anywhere good where I could experiment?"

"You really think you have a handle on it?" Abbot raised his eyebrows and Stiles realized that Abbot hadn't really thought he'd get there today. 

"Yeah. I want to practice somewhere that isn't shielded though, see if I can do it." 

"I can't help you tonight, but we can meet first thing tomorrow and see how it goes."

"Cool. When and where?"

Abbot pursed his lips in thought. "There's a lavatory in the Whitechapel Underground station that's always out of order, and it's way down the end of one of the platforms. Let's meet outside the station at 7:00 tomorrow morning and I'll keep watch and you can see if you can shield it." 

"That'd be great!" Stiles rubbed his face and looked around. "I'll need -"

"You can come over in the morning to grab your casebook," Abbot interrupted, "and pick up whatever other supplies you need from the things in the storeroom." 

"Amazing, thank you," his shoulders slumped in relief. 

"I'm going home. You're good here?"

"Yeah, I just want to run through things in my head one more time. I'll let myself out the back and lock up when I go." 

"I'll see you tomorrow morning, then." Abbot headed for the door.

"Goodnight!"

Stiles worked through things one more time; it was almost 8:00 when he finally emerged in the alley between the Book and Candle and The Lamb. Of course, it was then that he realized he hadn't done any laundry for the week. He swore and let himself into The Lamb, where he took the steps to the second floor two at a time. 

He bundled his things into the laundry bag and was rushing down the stairs again when he ran into Macy. 

"And where are you off to? We've not seen you all day!"

"Oh, I've been working on something next door. I need to talk to your dad later, actually, is he around?"

"'Course he is. He'll be around until closing tonight."

"Great, thanks! I have to get to the laundromat before it closes! I'll see you later!" He clattered out the side door and took off down the street.

Assuming Rolland gave him permission later, he was going to be doing his first real, big magic tomorrow. Most of what he'd worked on with Deaton so far had been force of will magic and manipulations of mountain ash, various teas and herbals, that sort of thing. Tomorrow he was going to be a sorcerer!

It was nearly closing when he wandered back in through the front door of The Lamb. He'd realized when he got to the laundromat that he'd forgotten to eat since he'd grabbed breakfast before the research and planning fest, but the cafe across the street was closed and he didn't want to leave his clothes in case they vanished in his absence. Although, then he could definitely buy those jeans.

The lights flickered as he passed over the threshold and the lamps burned red. There were two guys sitting at the bar and maybe another five or so scattered throughout the room, but clearly, most people were gone this late on a Sunday. That had to mean that the rest of the people in the bar were pack members, he reminded himself, and looking around, saw only faces he recognized from the pack meeting a few days ago. 

Rolland was at the bar polishing glasses and called out to him when he got a little closer. 

"Alright, lad? Macy said you wanted a word."

"Yessir. I, uh, don't know how private the word should be, though." 

"Well, then, come on through," he lifted the pass through section of the bar, "and we'll step into my office for a minute." He turned to the pair of men a bit away, "Davy, you alright out here?"

"Sure, Boss."

Stiles followed Rolland through the kitchen to a little office off to the side. 'Little Office' was quite generous though, it was more like a coat closet. It was packed full of supplies for the bar, filing cabinets, a desk, and a gigantic werewolf. Stiles assumed that Rolland wasn't in the least bit claustrophobic.

"So what can I do for you?"

"Well," huh, was this awkward? Stiles couldn't decide. "I was over at Jackson's with Faru and Robbie last night and they said that his place isn't shielded for eavesdropping; he forgot to tell me when he gave his general orientation last week. And, anyway, they said it was because Jackson has a thing about Abbot in his territory, and I don't know what happened there, but it sounds really uncomfortable, but he deserves a shielded place, and anyway, I think I can do it, I've been working on it all day and Abbot is going to let me shield a bathroom at the Whitechapel rail station tomorrow morning and if I can get it right can I shield Jackson's apartment for him?"

"Take a breathe, lad. You're not in any trouble." Rolland looked like he was trying not to laugh. "It'd be a nice thing to do, shielding Jackson's place for him. Have you asked him about it yet?"

"Nosir, I wanted to check with you first. Didn't want to offer if you said no." Stiles dropped his laundry bag on the floor so he'd stop worrying the strap between his fingers. 

"As long as you test it after you're finished, before you talk about anything sensitive."

"What's a good enough test?"

"I don't know. Usually when we're seeing how things take we have someone stand inside the place and shout and a wolf stands outside to see if they can hear anything." 

"Huh. Low-tech, yet effective."

Rolland did laugh at that. "Was there anything else?"

"Nosir, that was it." Stiles reached down to pick up his laundry bag. 

"Well then, come through to the kitchen and I'll hunt something up for you to eat. Your stomach is growling almost continuously." 

Stiles laughed stiltedly and rubbed his belly. "I, uh, kinda forgot to eat." 

"Well, we're not doing anything hot this time of night on a Sunday, but there are some rolls in that cabinet," he indicated with his head, "and there's ham and cheese in the fridge on the end." He reached up and grabbed a small plate off a shelf. "Make yourself a little something and then come eat at the bar."

Stiles followed directions, but now that he'd talked to Rolland his adrenaline was crashing. By the time he finished his sandwich he was nearly asleep in his plate. He hauled himself up the stairs, stripped, set an alarm, and fell into bed.


	7. Monday, June 30, 2014

Stiles jolted awake at the sound of his alarm and nearly smacked himself in the face trying to turn it off. He staggered to the bathroom in the hall and thankfully didn't run into anyone else; it was too early for the tourists to be up in any case. 

He groaned when he realized that he'd forgotten to take his clothes out of the laundry bag the night before and dumped the contents on his bed to hunt for something of the less wrinkled variety. He was unsuccessful. It was all wrinkled. He shrugged into some clothes and figured that it wouldn't be the worst he'd ever looked in public. 

After a quick stop at the Book and Candle to pick up his casebook and the supplies, he headed to the rail station to meet Abbot. He got there about five minutes late, but it took him a few more to locate Abbot in the crush. Of course, it was rush hour. All the easier for them to disappear into the crowd. 

In fact, no one looked at him. Or Abbot. After they used their cards to get through the barrier it was like they had disappeared. He shot a look over at Abbot and the man winked at him. Stiles added 'Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain magic' to the back of his casebook as soon as he got inside the bathroom. 

It was a small room, just the one door and a tiny little window next to the sinks. It should be fairly easy to shield. Abbot asked if he needed anything, but Stiles said that he was set and Abbot excused himself to read the paper on a nearby bench and redirect any nosey metro police. Or whatever the London equivalent of that was. 

Stiles lay one of his bath towels on the floor and sat cross-legged in the middle of it. He pulled out the casebook and sketched the room so he could set up a plan for himself. After he figured he had a good handle on things he got the rest of the materials out and set them up. 

He put the candle in front of his towel and lit it with a match, then got up and switched off the lights. He came back and sat crosslegged on the towel and got out the pre-made bundle of herbs and a small silver dish. He set it them down within easy reach. 

Stiles took a few deep breaths and worked on focusing his mind. He used the imagery of opening the third eye in the middle of his forehead to help himself concentrate and imagined that the room was pitch black and existed as a lone entity in space. He told himself that he was in the room, which was orbiting a bright sun. 

Focusing on one wall at a time, Stiles scanned each inch of space with his third eye, rotating the room so that the sun was shining on the outside of each wall as he went. He made a note of each place where the sun shone through; the door, the grimey little window, two small vents, and a crack in the tile of the wall back behind one of the toilets, and a few places where the ceiling tiles were loose. Every place the light shone through he imagined bricking up the space with dark black stones. 

After he had gone over all four walls, the ceiling, and the floor, and all he saw behind his closed eyelids was darkness, he stopped spinning the room and raised up to a crouch. He lit the bundle of herbs with the candle and placed them in the silver bowl. Then he opened his eyes and blew out the candle.

He focused on the smoldering herbs (they smelled rather good, actually, and it was making him hungry) and let the smoke fill up the room. Except it wasn't smoke, exactly. He was still breathing perfectly clearly, so it was more like the essence of the herbs, rather than actual smoke. 

When the room in his mind's eye was completely filled with smoke, or herb essence, he stood and raised his arms straight out to the sides. He let all that essence and energy gather into his palms and then brought them together in a sudden clap in front of himself. The energy disappeared in a puff of real smoke and Stiles coughed a few times before he got himself under control. 

He had felt the power gather in his hands, and then move through him so it should have worked. He stumbled over to the door and found the light switch. His towel, candle, and dish of burned up herbs looked rather sad in the harsh light of the bathroom; not like the tools of magic at all. 

Stiles poked his head out and gestured to Abbot, who rose from the bench to join him in the bathroom. 

"Well?" Stiles prompted. "I think I felt it work. Do you think it worked?"

"I felt it from outside." Abbot was nodding and looking around the room, especially at the breaches that Stiles had found. "I texted Macy when I felt the power building up; I thought it was likely that you would succeed at that point. She's going to come over and we'll see if it works on her."

"Awesome!" Stiles gathered up the detritus of his first real ritual magic and crammed the towel into the bottom of the bag he'd brought along. He didn't want Macy knowing that one of her bath towels had been on the floor of an out of order men's room in the subway. 

Someone knocked "shave and a haircut" on the door a minute later and Stiles yanked it opened to reveal an amused looking Macy Dyer. Her hair was knotted up on top of her head and she was wearing yoga pants and an oversized flannel shirt that was probably Rolland's. 

"So, did it work?" She grinned.

"You tell us!" Stiles waved her outside, shut the door and then yelled wordlessly. He waited for a couple of seconds, then yanked the door open. "Well?"

She laughed at the look on his face, "I didn't hear a thing." 

"Yes!" Stiles jumped and pumped his fist in the air. "I am the greatest!"

Macy laughed and hooked her elbow around his neck, forcing him down so she could give him a smacking kiss on the forehead. "Congratulations, Stiles!" 

Abbot was smiling indulgently. "Good job. Now, do you know how to take it down?"

"Yeah, yeah." Stiles waved them both outside and shut the door. He brought his hands together, opened his third eye, and imagined a small ball of light between his palms. He let it slowly get bigger and bigger, and then, when it was about the size of a grapefruit, he pulled his hands away and let it explode. It blew out the places that Stiles had bricked over.

"Did that work?" he called out in a slightly louder than normal voice. 

Macy poked her head into the room. "I can hear you again!"

"Man, taking it down is so much easier than putting it up." Stiles smiled and headed over to join the others on the platform. 

"I think you'll find that's true of most things." Abbot smiled at him. "That was really well done, Stiles. I assume you're going to do your friend's flat?"

"Yeah, uh, if that's okay with you. I mean, I asked Rolland last night and he said that if I could do it, he was fine with that." 

"It's not a problem. Why don't you have some lunch and then head over there. You'll need a fair amount of time to work and I don't need you in the shop today."

"Lunch?" Stiles was only just realizing how hungry he was.

Macy linked her arm in his and bumped his hip. "It's after eleven, Stiles. Did you have breakfast?" 

"Shit, no, I forgot again. And I can't believe that took four hours." 

"If you're going to work," Abbot looked around and Stiles knew he meant 'if you're going to do magic,' "you have to eat. Especially protein. The only vegetarians in our line of work all do Bambi-style strength of will work. You're capable of much more than that. And you'll get faster the more you practice."

That was both nice, and also sounded like a subtle dig against Dr. Deaton. Whatever, Stiles was a genius. And now he needed meat. 

Macy led them to a sandwich place a few storefronts down from the station and they went in and got a table. Stiles ordered an Italian sub, a Reuben, and a club sandwich, as well as some chips and an apple and fell on his food in a manner much more impolite than the way the wolf across the table was eating. 

They talked easily over lunch; Mellie was with her dad's parents so Macy didn't need to hurry back to The Lamb. Macy told him a little more about some of the other pack members and Abbot talked about the history of the neighborhood.

Stiles was still pretty amped up from his triumph, and they were getting ready to go when he realized that he would need to talk to Jackson before, you know, breaking into his place and going over every nook and cranny with his mind's eye.

Macy texted Jackson for him and after she heard back told him to head to the the library, which turned out to be the huge glass building opposite the Royal London Hospital, pretentiously named The Idea Store. Was Whitechapel Public Library not good enough?

He found Jackson at a table on the top floor by the windows, hunched over a stack of books and notebooks, playing with a pen. Jackson looked up before Stiles was halfway across the floor towards him and raised his eyebrows. Stiles threw himself into the seat opposite and grinned until he thought his face might break.

"I need your apartment keys. Oh, and your wifi password and Skype name."

"Would you like my firstborn, too?" Jackson twirled his pen, amused.

"No," Stiles snorted, then leaned across the table. "I need to be in your apartment by myself; you can't come home till I text you." 

"Why?"

"I can," Stiles looked around the room and then leaned closer, "make soufflé now. If you come home at the wrong time the whole thing would be blown, but if you wait to come home then it'll be great and I can," he paused significantly, "tell you all about it."

"You want to make soufflé?" 

"Yeah," Stiles stared at him. "I tried out a recipe this morning and Macy thought it was great. Rolland said that I could go over to your place if it worked and try it there and then we could talk about _whatever we want._ "

Understanding and amusement dawned on Jackson's face at more or less the same time. "You are really terrible at this." Jackson rolled his eyes, but reached into his pocket and pulled out a key ring at the same time. He slid two keys off the ring and passed them over, then pulled a page out of a notebook and started scribbling. "Is that where you were this morning instead of meeting me to go running? Making soufflé?"

"Oh, shit, I totally forgot!" Stiles grimaced.

"You really think you can do this?" There, the implications were clearly hitting him now, he was starting to look excited.

"Yeah, I mean, it'll take a while and it's more complicated than the one I did this morning, but I can do it." 

"And you won't let anyone else in the flat, right? You can do this by yourself?" 

"Yeah. It's a solo recipe and I'll be alone the whole time. I don't need any backup." 

"Cool." Jackson smiled and Stiles felt a bolt of lust hit him in the stomach.

"Are you at The Lamb tonight? 'Cause this really will take a while."

"Yeah, I'm closing." 

"Good. I'll message you on Skype when you can come home." Stiles poked his phone so it would tell him the time. "I better go get started, actually, so you're not just twiddling your thumbs in the bar at 2:00 in the morning." 

"Is that a possibility?" Jackson's eyebrows went back up. 

"I don't know, so I'll see you later," he held up his fist to bump, but Jackson just looked at it, sort of confused, so Stiles stood up, said, "'Kay, thanks, bye!" And bolted.

\-----

Jackson's apartment presented a few different challenges. For one thing, it was several rooms; even though the kitchen and living room were mostly open, he had to do the bedroom, bathroom, and closet, too. Also, there was all of the furniture inside. He prowled around for a bit, familiarizing himself with the space and happy to see that Jackson had radiators instead of vents. He was going to have to do all of the outside sections of wall separately, but thought the ceiling and floor for the whole place could be done in one go.

Jackson's bedroom was all dark wood, with quite a big bed and a large bureau on the wall the bedroom shared with the bathroom. There was only one window, a dormer, so that was nice. The walk-in closet was tucked behind the bathroom and seemed like it wouldn't present any problems, though it did have an access panel to get to the hot water heater in the back.

In the end he decided to do the whole thing in one, even though it would require more concentration than if he just broke everything down into discrete parts. It would also require really trusting his mind's eye as he walked with his eyes closed from room to room during the bricking up part of the magic. In the end it would be better though; Jackson probably wanted to be able to hear people in the kitchen even when he had the bedroom door closed.

He had a quick glass of water, went to the bathroom, moved a few pieces of furniture that would be in his path, and got started.

\-----

By the time Stiles finished coughing herb essence out of his lungs it was dark outside and the apartment was lit only with streetlights. He was also freaking exhausted, but layered over that exhaustion was a small, sweet satisfaction. He still needed to test the magic, but was sure it had worked. 

He made his way to the door and flicked the light switch, then grabbed his phone off the counter and joined the wifi network. Then he went looking for Jackson on Skype and messaged that he was good to come home. He couldn't sit still though, and kept prowling around. There were no messages on his phone from home, so he just sent a group message that said, "I AM A WIZARD!" and clicked out of Skype. 

He wanted to test the spell though, so when he found a phone charger/speaker thing, he plugged his phone in to give it a try. He scanned through songs, put "Hungry Like the Wolf" on repeat, and then turned it all the way up so it'd be really fucking loud. He grabbed the keys, let himself out in the hall and closed the door.

Silence.

Amazing. Stiles was the king of the universe. He went back in and raided the fridge. He was standing by the counter eating a cheese and pickle sandwich and a bunch of weird chips when the door buzzer went off. Stiles ran over to the intercom and pushed the button so the street door would open, then unlocked the apartment door and waited. It was perfect timing; Duran Duran was just starting up again.

A minute later the doorknob turned and Jackson came in, flinching at either the choice of song or the volume at which it was played. Stiles grinned at him and bounced on his heels. "Well? Could you hear anything in the hall?"

Jackson snatched his phone out of the speaker and silenced the music. "That is really amazing, Stiles," he turned and relief and gratitude was written all over his face. "You get used to having safe zones here, you know? This was home but it wasn't really safe in the same sense. Thank you, seriously." He tossed Stiles his phone, dumped his backpack by the table, and started moving the furniture back into place. 

Stiles went back to his plate of late dinner and brought it over so he could collapse on the couch. "It's pretty freaking cool to do. It feels like it takes so much less time than it does. I thought I was under for an hour or two, then I finished and it had been over ten hours." 

Jackson sat on the cushion next to him and stole a chip with werewolf speed. 

"Fortunately your place is well insulated, in spite of all the nooks and crannies. You can even have the door in the back of your closet that goes to the hot water heater open and the place will still be soundproofed."

"You were in my closet?" Jackson looked skeptical, but not pissed.

"Dude, I was everywhere. Don't worry though, I didn't caress your silk boxers or go through your nightstand or anything." 

Jackson rolled his eyes, "I don't have silk boxers." He stole another chip. 

They made small talk after that, munching along. Stiles asked about The Lamb that night (it was quiet) and what the hell was wrong with the chips (the crisps are good for you, Stilinski. Well, not bad, anyway.) Jackson asked about what he'd be working on now that he could eavesdrop shield (spotting supernaturals on the street and whatever cool 'you don't see me' magic Abbot had pulled at the metro station that morning.)

When he finished, Stiles dropped his plate on the coffee table and sunk back into the couch. "Can I spend the night here? I'm seriously too tired to hike all the way back to The Lamb."

"It's a twelve minute walk." But Jackson was laughing at him. Stiles didn't even have to make pathetic eyes before he took Stiles's plate and headed to the kitchen. "I'll grab you a blanket and a pillow. You want something to sleep in?" 

Ten minutes later Stiles was falling asleep in sweatpants that were too big for him after finger brushing his teeth, but it was on the magic couch and Jackson was moving quietly around the place, locking up and getting lights, and he was a magical genius, so he felt perfectly happy.


	8. Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Stiles woke up before Jackson the next morning and padded into the kitchen to get the coffee going. He ran into Jackson on the way out of the bathroom a few minutes later, so Stiles made them both ham and cheese omelets while the shower ran. 

Jackson came out of the bathroom just as Stiles was turning away from the stove and Stiles almost hit himself in the face with the spatula. Jackson had a towel wrapped around his waist and was rubbing another one through his dyed black hair. The light brown chest hair had water droplets still clinging to it and Stiles went from kind of sleepy to what-the-fuck in less than three seconds. Jackson's nipples were pierced. He had just always thought Jackson was cold when he wore that tight Slaughtered Lamb t-shirt. Although, that didn't make much sense, in retrospect. Werewolf.

"Oh, coffee, thanks!" He reached across the counter and Stiles grabbed the pot and the tall travel mug next to it. Jackson draped the hair drying towel over one shoulder and held the mug while Stiles filled it.

"Is there creamer or sugar around here anywhere you want?" The coffee pot was empty so he put it in the sink and started running water into it. 

"Real men don't need to put any of that shit in their coffee." Jackson said, wryly and clearly quoting someone. 

Stiles laughed. "The coffee at the Sheriff's station is gross and my dad hates the taste anyway. He drinks his coffee with four creamers and two stevias." 

Jackson laughed, too. "I actually like coffee black." He took a long drink. "And if you pay enough for it you don't need any add-ons."

"I made you an omelet," Stiles told his left nipple ring. "Go get dressed."

Jackson laughed again, put the coffee down on the counter, and wandered off to his bedroom. Stiles got dressed in yesterday's even more wrinkled clothes and they breakfasted on the couch. 

When they finished Stiles stacked their plates and turned to face Jackson, who suddenly looked wary. 

"What?"

"And now, for the quid pro quo!" Stiles announced with a flourish.

"For the omelet?" Jackson tried.

"For the eavesdrop-shielding, jackass!"

"What do you want?"

"I'm going to say some things and you're going to listen and not wolf out on me."

"Oh, Jesus." Jackson dropped back so he was half-lying down. "You know I've been to supernatural therapy, right?"

"No, I didn't know that, but that's awesome. It should make this a short conversation. Maybe it's more of a lecture though, since I'm going to do all the talking and then pause for questions," Stiles added thoughtfully. 

"Wow. This sounds like it's going to be amazing."

Stiles took a deep breath. "I grew up calling Deputy Allen, 'Uncle Keith.'"

Jackson snapped up to sitting again, eyes wide and scared. Clearly this wasn't the lecture he was expecting.

"He used to come over on Sundays and barbecue with my Dad. We had my mom's wake at his house. When I was in seventh grade, Terri, Deputy Andrews, tried to teach me how to talk to girls. It didn't work, obviously, but she tried." Another shuddering breath. He should not have eaten that cheese, his stomach was cramping up.

"Glen, Deputy Samuels, was kind of a prick, but he used to quiz me on the codes for Beacon County, and he caught me and Scott drinking in the preserve when we were like fifteen and just drove us home and didn't tell anyone." Stiles's hands were shaking and he gripped the fingers of his left hand to try and stop them. 

"Dan was like, a crazy health food nut and used to keep an eye on my dad for me, make sure that he wasn't sneaking fast food shit in, even when they had a tough case. I suspect that my dad used to give him the cauliflower out of his lunch whenever I packed it."

Jackson buried his face in his hands, elbows on his knees. "Why are you telling me this?" His voice was steady, but Stiles wasn't fooled.

"No one back home blames you for what happened." 

Jackson raised his head and snorted. "Sure."

"I'm serious. I knew those guys better than anyone else in the pack and not once since we figured out what was going on have I thought that it was your fault." Jackson was staring into space, not responding. "Seriously. When we talk about what happened we say 'Matt' or 'Gerard' or maybe 'the kanima,' but nobody says 'Jackson.' Not even me, and I hated you the most before I got to know you and loved those guys the best. If anybody was going to blame you for what happened it'd be me, right?" 

Jackson made reluctant eye contact, but still didn't say anything.

"When we reminisce it's like, 'remember when the kanima did this' or 'the kanima did that.' You weren't even there, dude. I admit," Stiles swallowed nervously, "I was the captain of Team Kill the Lizard, but then we found out that you weren't doing it yourself and genuinely had no control and that someone else had to be using you, and we started hunting them. Okay? You were innocent. And as soon as you started to figure it out, you started forcing yourself not to hurt people; that night at the game and at the warehouse. Even with your consciousness mostly gone you'd rather have let Derek kill you than hurt someone else."

Stiles coughed a couple of times and snagged the glass of water on the coffee table for a few quick drinks.

"So what I'm saying is that your friends are still your friends and I know they'd like to hear from you. If you ask Danny to come teach your six year old fan club to play goalie, he will come. The only thing he might be pissed at is that it took you so long to call, but new Jackson is like, a one thousand percent improvement on old Jackson, so that won't last long."

"Can we be done with this lecture now?" Jackson asked, without heat.

"Sure," Stiles nodded and stood up, grabbing their breakfast dishes. He changed the subject, "Are you working tonight?"

Jackson nodded in relief, "Yeah, I have an appointment with one of my tutors in a bit, then I'll swim, then I go over to The Lamb." 

Stiles loaded up the dishwasher while Jackson tidied away the blanket and borrowed pajamas, and they talked about inconsequential nothing till they parted ways in front of The Lamb.


	9. Friday, July 4, 2014

When Jackson picked Stiles up at The Lamb for their run on Friday morning Stiles was all fired up about the 4th of July. 

"Come on, I'm missing the Sheriff's Department 4th of July Fundraiser and Barbecue and you are the only other American I know here! We have to do something tonight!"

"It's just another Friday, Stiles, it doesn't mean anything here." Jackson had his leg propped up on the railing in front of The Lamb, stretching out his hamstrings.

"Yeah, no shit. I wished Macy a 'Happy Fourth' on my way out just now and she called me a 'bloody Colonial.'"

Jackson laughed. "I love Macy."

"And I love hot dogs and potato salad and beer!" Stiles tipped his toes up against the building to loosen his calves. 

"If you can keep up today, I will allow you to use my kitchen tonight." Jackson smirked at him. When they'd run on Wednesday, Stiles had thought he was dying. He was fairly certain that if he trained with Jackson for the next eight weeks Finstock wouldn't even recognize him when he got back. He'd probably have to compete Cross Country, instead of just practicing with them. 

"If I can keep up with you today, you have to let me use your kitchen, you have to do the dishes, and I get to sleep on your couch tonight." Stiles fixed him with a serious glare. 

Jackson laughed. "You're on."

\-----

They were cooling down in the park about an hour later, stretching and lying on the grass. If Stiles didn't know better, he'd think that Jackson had actually slowed down for him. Jackson was leaning back on his hands, legs splayed out, face turned towards the sky. 

Stiles was stretching out, reaching for his toes when he saw three girls on a bench about fifty feet away watching them. Or more accurately, watching Jackson. He looked to his left and saw what they were seeing. Jackson's plain red t-shirt was barely damp with sweat and it had slid up a little bit so his flat belly and happy trail were once again on display. His shoulders were still broad, his biceps still large, and he had a calmly happy look on his face. 

He opened his eyes and looked over at Stiles. "I'm not at The Lamb tonight, so I'll hit up Tesco's after I finish studying, get what we need for 4th of July, shall I?"

"Awesome." Stiles smiled broadly. The girls were whispering among themselves and shoving at the one in the center, the best looking one, Stiles noted. She was blonde and thin, with clear skin and a very short, very expensive looking skirt. "Do you have Netflix? Since we can't have fireworks we should watch _Independence Day_!"

"Do you have food and movie pairings for all major holidays?" Jackson pulled his arms over his head and started stretching his back. 

"It's one of my many skills." Stiles shot back. Then he lowered his voice. "Do you not see your fan club over on the bench?"

"What?" Jackson looked over at him, then looked out the corner of his eye across the way. "Shit. Those girls are always in the park when I run and that one in the middle will not take no for an answer. God forbid they find out where I work. Let's get out of here." Jackson stood up, then reached down and hauled Stiles to his feet as well.

"Are you seriously scared of those girls?" Stiles grinned at him. 

"I'm not scared, I'm angry." His clenched jaw did have a certain grim tension. "The one in the middle is called Imogene, she's literally asked me out six times and gets increasingly pissed off each time. I've told her I'm gay but she seems to think it's a brush off." All of this was said out of the side of Jackson's mouth as he tried to hustle Stiles out of there with a hand on his lower back.

"Well, let's prove it," Stiles said without thinking. He flushed up like a tomato in time for Jackson to look back at him. He saw Imogene approaching out of the corner of his eye, swinging her hips and twirling a strand of hair around a forefinger. 

Jackson clearly felt her coming closer, too, because suddenly he had one hand on Stiles's waist and the other on his jaw and was steering him backwards towards a tree. Stiles's back met bark, then Jackson used the hand on his jaw to tilt his mouth up incrementally, before bringing his own lips down on top of Stiles's. 

Stiles was frozen for a second before he felt Jackson's teeth on his bottom lip, then he remembered where he was and what was happening. He put his hands on Jackson's stomach (it was probably going to be his best chance to touch muscles like these, unless, say, Derek got an abdominal wound sometime in the near future) and slid them slowly up Jackson's torso, over the barbells in his nipples and up to his shoulders. 

He opened his lips and Jackson's tongue slipped inside his mouth, at the same time, the hand on his waist slid between the small of Stiles's back and the tree and pulled him closer. Stiles melted into him. The hand on his jaw slipped back to cradle his head and tilt it to the side so that Jackson could get at his neck. Stiles shivered when he felt Jackson's mouth ghost up behind his ear, then Jackson whispered, "This what you had in mind, sweetheart?"

Stiles jerked in Jackson's grip, and Jackson took a half a step back so Stiles could see his smirking face. He pulled Stiles away from the tree and flush up against his side, the hand on his back sliding across so it was poised on Stiles's opposite hip. Jackson snaked his thumb up under the hem of Stiles's t-shirt and rested it on the bare skin of his waist. He led them out of the park and neither one of them looked back. 

As soon as they cleared the entrance to the park and turned the corner, Jackson dropped his hand and took a step away. He leaned against the brick wall of a shop, tilted his head back, and laughed. 

"Oh, Jesus, thank you so much." 

"Uh, yeah. Well. It's all part of the service." Stiles attempted to reply cheerily, but that had been his third kiss ever, first with a guy, and his head was still reeling. "So you really are completely gay then, huh?"

"What?" Jackson's head snapped around to look at Stiles, but his expression was all confusion. "Yeah, I mean, I told you so, didn't I?"

"Yeah, I guess I just. I dunno. Lydia, you know, man?"

"Oh, yeah. There was never anything romantic between us at all." Jackson pushed off the building and they started walking back towards The Lamb and Jackson's apartment. "She's known about me forever. We had a crush on the same guy in the fourth grade."

"No way, who?" Stiles bounced next to Jackson and grinned at him again.

"Damian King." Jackson closed his eyes in fond remembrance. "Do you remember him? He moved at the end of that year." 

"Do I remember Damian King?" Stiles snorted. "Black hair, blue eyes, dimples. Totally sweet to everyone, never left the same kids to get picked last when we played kickball." 

"Yeah, he was definitely the epitome of the fourth graders at Beacon Elementary." 

"So if you knew and Lydia knew, why all the subterfuge?"

"A bunch of reasons, I guess." Jackson chewed his lip and looked thoughtful. "I really didn't hurt her, you know. Not like that anyway. I'd never hurt Lyds like that." 

"I guess I just don't get it; it looked so real." 

"Yeah, well, we wanted it to look real." Jackson slipped his hands into the pockets in his basketball shorts and looked down. "I always knew I had crushes on boys, you know, but I didn't really get what that meant until Danny came out in eighth grade. I mean, Lydia and Danny were my best friends and it wasn't like I was talking about girls and boobs with either of them, you know, so I didn't know there was anything really different about me."

"Huh. I guess that makes sense." 

"Danny had never talked about who he was into at all, I guess he was a lot more aware of things than I was and he thought I'd be freaked out or something. Then he came out and it was like, 'oh, that's what being gay means and I want to kiss boys, too.'"

They turned a corner and Stiles felt Jackson shrink into himself a little. "I told Lydia I'd figured it out, she, of course, had known for literally years at that point and was just waiting for me to catch up. We planned this whole thing about how I would tell my parents and she even waited outside the room for me." 

Jackson cleared his throat a few times. "Looking back now, I think they knew what I was going to say, but at the time, they just cut me off with all this talk about how disappointed the Mahealanis must be, and how glad they were that I wasn't like that. That I could still be friends with Danny, but if he ever tried to touch me or made me uncomfortable I should tell an adult. That sort of thing, you know?"

"Jesus fucking Christ." Okay, Stiles's dad hadn't had a great reaction when Stiles had tried to tell him he was bi the first time, but as soon as he'd realized Stiles wasn't kidding, he'd been all accepting and warning him that guys could be dangerous so Stiles should be careful and come to him if he had any questions. Stiles wasn’t sure what kind of questions Tom thought Stiles could have that he could answer, and was very carefully not thinking about the possibility that Tom had messed around with guys in the past.

"Yeah. It was all about making it impossible for me to ever tell them the truth. Then my dad starts in about how hot Lydia is and how I should lock her down and a bunch of other stuff. I was kind of in shock and I just walked out of the room." 

"And Lydia heard all this?"

"Yeah. It was her idea that we fake date. She had her own reasons so it ended up working out pretty well for both of us."

"But you were such a dickbag when you broke up with her." 

Jackson actually laughed again. "That was her call. We had an easy-out pact and she decided she wanted out for a while. She sort of hates and disdains all the high school politics, and kind of gets off on manipulating everyone. We used to brainstorm breakup ideas. She picked the breakup by text. It wasn't our most dramatic idea, but she wanted to play it."

"Are you serious right now?" Stiles's mind was reeling again, almost as much as it had been a few minutes ago after that kiss.

"Yeah." Jackson grinned at him. "Am I stupid enough to have broken up with Lydia Martin by text _for real_?" 

"She just seemed so hurt." 

Jackson smirked. "She let herself in that night with two pints of ice cream and we watched _Cabin in the Woods_ in my bed." A wash of sadness moved over his face, quickly replaced with blankness. "I think I was pretty terrible to her after that. I don't remember much of what happened between getting bitten and being in the warehouse with you guys. Even the," he paused, "non-lizard parts are pretty blank. Like, I know I did something bad to Allison, because I remember her looking scared and Scott yelling, but I don't know what it was."

They paused to cross a street. Whitechapel was filling up with people on their way to work, and the streets were getting busier.

"You just scared her a little bit." Stiles filled in. "You didn't hurt her or anything."

"I still wish I could remember."

Stiles let it rest for a moment before changing the subject. "So, like, if the relationship was so extremely fake from the beginning, why were you so awful to me for so long? I mean, you weren't ever really into Lydia." 

They crossed the street in silence, then Jackson leaned against the wall of a cafe and grimaced. "I am sorry about that. I mean, it sounds funny and fun in retrospect, but the truth is, there was a lot of pressure on both of us, and I was terrified that she'd drop me for a real boyfriend. Most of the time Lydia was all I had, and the thought of having to deal with my parents without her was just," he paused, trying to think of the word, "paralyzing." 

"But dude, she didn't even know I existed." 

Jackson snorted. "Lydia always knew you. Stiles, you're the only person in Beacon Hills who's any kind of close to as smart as she is. I spent the better part of a month in ninth grade listening to how brilliant your science fair project was, and the words, 'so help that Stilinski kid if he thinks he'll be valedictorian over me' have been said in my presence roughly one thousand times."

"That little minx." Stiles gritted out. "I'm totally emailing her when I get a break today."

Jackson winked at him. Actually fucking winked. "Say hi for me." They were at the alley next to The Lamb by then and Stiles was about to peel off. "Hey, what do you think your fifteen year old self would say if you told him that you wouldn't be kissing Lydia, but you would be kissing me?"

Stiles tripped over nothing on the sidewalk and only Jackson's quick reflexes kept him from skinning his knees, hands, and face open on the street. 

\-----

After a long day of sorting herbs and washing jars while Abbot took an interesting sounding consult in the Victorian parlor (in which Stiles was not allowed to participate) Stiles decided that he would bring his laundry over to Jackson's, too. There was a washer in the kitchen under the countertop and a dryer in the pantry. He told himself it made more sense than waiting until Sunday and then schlepping everything over to the laundromat. 

Also, he felt a little owed after the whole kissing thing. Even though he sort of suggested it. 

Stiles had Skyped Jackson a grocery list earlier in the day so everything he needed for potato salad was waiting on the countertop when Jackson let him into the apartment. Jackson gave him free reign of the kitchen and then headed back to the table where he had books and a laptop all spread out.

After Stiles got everything started he wandered into the living area and flopped himself across the couch. He pulled out his phone and signed into Skype and, wonder of wonders, Scott was online. He yelped and sat up. 

"Hey, do you mind if I Skype call Scott? I haven't actually seen his face since I got here, with the time change and all."

"What?" Jackson looked at him for a minute before his eyes focused. "Oh, yeah, sorry, this is really complicated," he gestured to the text book with the hand holding the pen. "Do you mind going into the bedroom and closing the door? I mean, I'll still be able to hear you, but it'll be easier to block out." 

"Oh, sure." Stiles jumped up. "Do you have any headphones? That way you at least probably won't have to hear Scott."

Jackson squinted at his table, then dislodged a mound of papers and pulled out a silver MacBook Pro with headphones plugged into the side. "Here, you can use this so you're not peering at a tiny phone screen."

"Sweet! Thanks, dude!" Stiles took the laptop and headed into Jackson's room, shutting the door behind him. The only place to sit was on the bed, so he slipped his shoes off and propped himself against the headboard with a pillow on his lap. He settled the computer and called Scott. 

There was a bleep-bloop noise and then Scott's face popped up. Stiles tried to talk quietly, but it was hard to contain his excitement. 

After general hellos and asking after the pack they chatted a bit about the summer so far. Scott, as it turned out, was bored as hell. He was working a lot, trying to save up money for college, and doing the same thing he'd done before junior year; trying to get ahead on school work. 

Since Allison was eighteen now she was working for her dad and the two of them were out of town more often than not, hitting every firearms and law enforcement convention west of the Rockies. Stiles laughed and suggested that Allison probably made the most intimidating booth babe ever. Scott got a dopey smile on his face. "She broke a guy's wrist in Bakersfield last week."

Isaac had finally agreed to sit down with Derek's financial planner and gotten things sorted out with his money situation. He'd sold the old house, but to Stiles's surprise, had decided to keep the graveyard, though he'd hired a guy to manage the place. It kind of made sense, in a morbid way. Lots of people died in Beacon Hills. The graveyard might help send Isaac to college. 

Scott also reported that Lydia had decided that her summer project was going to involve socializing Derek, whether he wanted that or not. As far as Scott could tell, that meant lots of interior decorating; the loft had a lot more throw pillows every time he went over there.

Peter had missed the last couple of pack meetings, but Derek reported that he was on vacation in Baja, hanging out with a witch friend he hadn't seen since before the fire. 

After hearing all the news from home, Stiles talked a little about London so far, but, while he found himself eager to explain the Dyers and Faru and Robbie and Abbot, he was strangely reluctant to discuss Jackson at all. Whether that was because the dude could probably hear or out of respect for Jackson's new love of privacy, Stiles wasn't sure. He didn't even tell Scott he was in Jackson's apartment, just let him think this was his room at The Lamb. Scott was excited to hear about the pub and Stiles explained about how it was also the gathering place for the pack. 

"It's got all these soundproof pockets. They don't talk about the supernatural out and about in London, because there are just too many people here, so Abbot taught me how to soundproof, too. I should definitely do the loft when I get home. They even have a warning system on the doors, to let you know if someone other than pack is around and I want to be able to do that before coming home as well." 

"So it's worth it then? You're learning lots of cool stuff?"

"Oh, dude, it's awesome. I wish you could have come, too. They're a really traditional pack in a lot of ways, and it's so cool to see how an old pack like this operates. I'll want to talk structure and procedure and stuff with you when I come home." 

"I don't know, man. I kinda like that we're loose and informal. I don't know how I'd feel about being a super bossy Alpha or anything." 

"It's not like Rolland is really authoritative," Stiles protested. "It's more like, there are rules so that everyone knows what is or isn't allowed and everyone knows where they fit in the pack. It can be a safety thing, too. Like, phone-tree style. Everyone has a specific job, so you know where they are and if they're not there, something might be up." 

"I guess I see the point of that." 

"I think it's one of the reasons Jackson is so much better now. His role is clearly defined and he knows what expectations he has to meet." Stiles mused idly, before remembering that the man in question was in the next room and probably wouldn't be thrilled to hear himself being psychoanalyzed with Scott. 

Scott's eyes were bugging out of his head. "Jackson? Jackson is better?"

Stiles tried to move on quickly. "Yeah, something like that would probably really help Isaac, you know? Maybe even Derek." Scott still looked dubious. "Like, you sometimes treat me as your second, and sometimes Allison, but technically it should probably be Derek." 

Scott's brow wrinkled, "But you're like, my brother. And Allison's my girlfriend, and a total badass." 

"Yeah, but I'm going to be the Emissary, it's kind of a different position. And Allison's human, too, but from watching the Whitechapel wolves, I feel like it's important that the second is a wolf. They're in charge when the Alpha is gone." 

"I guess we can talk about it when you get home." Scott allowed. 

After that the subject changed to the picnic in Beacon Hills that night. Stiles made Scott promise he'd go to the grocery store and make a huge salad full of veggies and lean protein and then stand over the Sheriff and watch him eat it. He wasn't sure Scott would actually do it, but it made him feel better to think of his dad not eating hamburgers and chili, but spinach salad with broccoli and shredded baked chicken. After talking about food Stiles realized that it was getting late and he was hungry, so he made his goodbyes and signed out. 

When he got back to the living room Jackson was just standing up from the table and stretching. "I think I'm finished for the night. You want to switch your laundry and I'll start hot dogs?" 

Stiles got the dryer going and changed into his sleep pants with the Jedi Training Academy logo on the leg. By that time Jackson had heated up some hot dogs in a skillet on the stovetop, so he pulled the condiments and potato salad out of the fridge, along with a couple of ciders Faru must have left there. 

They watched _Independence Day_ and _Air Force One_ before Jackson brought Stiles a blanket and pillow and they went to bed.


	10. Saturday, July 5, 2014 - Monday, July 7, 2014

Stiles ended up spending the entire weekend at Jackson's apartment, just stacking clean clothes on an end table and making space for his toiletries around the sink. On Saturday they took Mellie out again, but this time got on the Underground and went all the way to the London Zoo, even though it was in Westminster Pack territory. Apparently it was as fine as Jackson had asserted that first week though, and they made no supernatural contacts. 

Stiles talked them into going to the Gorilla Kingdom exhibit because he wanted to see the pregnant gorilla (even though she wasn't super pregnant), but the gorillas they saw all hated Jackson and Mellie and flipped their shit when they came close. The three of them left in a hurry before they could be accused of tormenting the animals. 

They had lunch and hung out in the children's area for a while before heading to the aquarium. The combination of lunch and darkness made Mellie start flagging, and before they were out of the building, Jackson had handed off the backpack to Stiles and replaced it with a small, slightly cranky werewolf. 

She was completely asleep by the time they were on the Underground back home and when they handed her over to Macy she was doing that sweaty sleeping child thing, where if you didn't keep a hand on her head it would flop to the side and look extremely uncomfortable. 

They hooked up with Robbie and Faru that night and did finally end up going out to Vibe, but it was just as lame as the wolves had warned Stiles. The lights and decor were cheesy and the music was dated and dorky, but they had a pretty decent time anyway. 

Robbie tried to teach Stiles how to dance, but he was terrible at it. Jackson, on the other hand, was a hot commodity on the dance floor and switched guys pretty much every song. Faru just blatantly flaunted his coolness by sitting and watching the rest of them and letting the women come up to him and flirt (and they did.)

Stiles and Robbie were taking a break with Faru when Jackson joined them. 

"See any likely sacrifices?" Robbie asked Jackson innocently. No one noticed Stiles's small wince. 

"I told you, Robson, I am capable of not hooking up from time to time." 

"Yeah, I'll definitely believe that when I see it," she smirked.

Faru laughed. "She's just jealous, Jax."

"Hey! Just because I have higher standards doesn't mean that I couldn't pull like he does if I wanted to!"

Jackson smiled at her. "You're right, Robbie, I do have lower standards." He palmed her head and pulled her to him for a quick kiss on the forehead. "Of course, it would probably help if people didn't think you were attempting to teach a bear to dance in the 1980s." He shot a smirk at Stiles, "No offense."

"Hey!" Stiles pointed an accusatory finger at Jackson. "Offense. Offense, buddy!"

"Fine!" Robbie threw up her hands. "You take him." 

"What?" Stiles wrinkled his forehead at her. "Why would I want to dance with Jackson?"

Faru leaned over and put a hand on Stiles's arm. "It's not like we haven't seen you looking at his -"

"Whoa! Hey! He's nicely shaped, okay? That's it!" Stiles's heart was hammering in his chest and he hoped the wolves couldn't hear it over the music. Or the sound of Jackson laughing. Which was a think that was happening.

"Exactly." Faru smiled. "So give Robbie a break and let Jax teach you how to dance with guys." 

Stiles scowled at them all. Faru's overly pleasant smile, Robbie's smirk, and Jackson's hilarity. "You guys suck." He grabbed Jackson's wrist and led him back out to the dance floor.

They stopped in the middle of the crowd and Stiles faced off with his hands on his hips. Jackson scrubbed his hands through his hair and smiled at him. Then he grabbed Stiles by the hips and brought him right up against his own body. 

He angled his head towards Stiles's ear - hey, on even ground, Stiles was actually a tiny bit taller - and spoke loudly enough to be heard over the music. "You need to move less in general, and bend your knees." He guided Stiles into a sort of rolling grind. "See, won't work if you don't bend your knees."

They got that going for a few bars, then Jackson tilted his head again. "You can touch me you know, I'm not going to freak out." Stiles jolted his head away to try to get a look at Jackson in the dim light. He definitely saw Jackson's eyes roll, then Jackson took his hands from where they were hanging limply by his hips and planted one on the back of his neck and the other at the small of his back. Then he put his own hands back on Stiles. "It's a pretty good clue that if a guy wants to dance with you he's going to be okay with you touching him. At least a little."

Honestly, it felt like a lot to pay attention to, but Jackson was sort of leading the roll-grind so Stiles tried to relax and let things happen a little more. Once he got the whole loose-hips-loose-knees thing everything started working better. 

And yeah, it was kind of sexy. Fortunately he was still too nervous and having to concentrate too hard for anything else to get hard.

They danced a couple of songs like that, and right after Stiles started to get the hang of it he felt another guy slide in behind him. A big, warm body pressed up against his back, and two hands reached around to lay flat on his belly. He jolted his eyes to Jackson's, who raised an eyebrow at him inquiringly. Stiles didn't know what he looked like but Jackson broke eye contact with him and looked over his shoulder. He made a "we're not interested face" and shook his head once. The guy let go. 

It took a few minutes but Jackson got him to loosen up again and showed him a few more things. Stiles finally threw his arms around Jackson's neck and pulled him in so he could shout in Jackson's ear, "I need water!"

They made their way back to Faru's table and grabbed the drinks he'd been watching for them. Stiles gulped down the rest of his water while Faru smirked at him. 

Robbie came rocketing out of the crowd a moment later and crashed into her brother. “Far, some wanking arsehole just told me to come back when I’d gotten out of school. Beat him up for me, would you?”

Faru yanked her around so he could see her. “Aw, Alice darling, am I meant to beat them up if they promise not to sleep with you? And here’s me buying them drinks instead.”

“Wanker.” She growled at him in a girl way, not a wolf way. She looked over at Stiles, “He goes Irish when he’s being a bastard. Thinks it’s more charming that way.”

“Shall we get out of here?” Jackson asked. 

They all headed back to their neighborhood, Robbie still gently harassing Faru as the two of them peeled off towards their house. Stiles tried to get Jackson to give him a piggyback ride up the stairs to his apartment, but Jackson denied him. 

As Stiles was walking back to The Lamb and The Book and Candle on Monday morning he suddenly realized he’d spent the whole weekend in Jackson’s company and it hadn’t sucked. It had actually been kind of fun.


	11. Tuesday, July 8, 2014 - Saturday, July 12, 2014

As the week progressed, Stiles realized he was beginning to get the hang of things. When he met Faru and Robbie for dinner on Wednesday he was able to report under the red lights of the gas lamps that he was now able to use his third eye to see supernaturals, and so was no longer confined to the area immediately around The Lamb. 

It was quite bizarre actually, but werewolves gave off an aura the color of their eyes. His friends at the table both glowed yellow, he’d done it to Rolland earlier and the Alpha was red, of course. (Rolland had also thought that Stiles was having some sort of episode from the fixed stare and vacant expression, but Stiles was sure he’d be able to make it look more natural with practice.) Jackson had been surrounded by blue light. 

Abbot had told him that most common magic workers, the two of them included, fell somewhere on the white-purple scale, and if he saw a color he didn’t know, it was advisable to to use caution. 

On Friday evening Stiles had shown up at Jackson’s flat covered in foul smelling muck and demanded to use the shower first and then the bathtub. Jackson had laughed at him and then let him in. Stiles had used the better part of about $80 worth of Jackson’s bath and personal grooming products before he felt clean enough to soak. 

Fucking plumbing gnomes, man. 

Jackson ordered them a pizza and let Stiles crash on his couch in his sleep clothes again. He’d even cracked open a new package of boxer briefs and donated a pair to the cause. Stiles was mildly disappointed to see that they weren’t silk after all. 

Stiles woke up on Saturday morning to a note on the coffee table weighed down by a key. 

  
_Had to head to the station, full moon tonight and I’m up north. You can crash on the couch. DO NOT let Abbot in here for any reason._  


  
_Back late Sunday or Monday afternoon - Jax_  


It was only as he was adding the key to his ring that Stiles realized it; Jackson Whittemore was his friend.


	12. Sunday, July 13, 2014

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags.

Stiles came awake to someone banging on the door to Jackson's at about 3:00 in the morning. He rolled himself out of bed (okay, so Jackson hadn't said he could sleep in his bed, but it's not like the guy needed it.) He opened the door to Macy with a bundled up Mellie in her arms. Mellie looked fiercely annoyed at being awake in the middle of the night, and Macy looked fiercely pissed, though at what, Stiles wasn't sure. 

"Hey, Stiles!" Macy chirped. "I'm just going to put Mellie down and then I thought maybe we could have a cuppa tea and catch up." She looked at him with wide eyes.

"That sounds super fun." Stiles agreed gravely. "I'll put the kettle on." 

Macy nodded decisively and swept past him towards the bedroom, with Mellie grumbling inarticulately in her arms. Stiles headed to the kitchen and shook the electric kettle. The water was low so he rinsed it out and filled it up, then flipped it on. He looked down at himself and realized he was only wearing boxer briefs (fortunately his own), so he snagged his red hoodie off the back of the stuffed chair and slid into it. 

Macy came out of Jackson's room just as the kettle was boiling and tossed him his Zoidberg sleep pants with a "they were on the foot of the bed and smelled like you," then bustled past him and started doctoring tea for them both while he slid the pants up his legs.

"Hey, how'd you guys get up here, anyway? Was the street door propped open?"

"Nah, I have a key. I just thought you'd be less freaked out by knocking than, you know, two werewolves leaning over you in the night."

"Mellie did look pretty snarly." Stiles allowed.

Macy snorted. "No shit. And I'm going to be paying for it all day tomorrow, too." 

"What's going on? Is everyone okay?" Stiles made his way to the couch and Macy joined him and handed him his tea.

"My dad called about a half an hour ago. He's calling Abbot now, but he wanted you to be in the loop, too. Stiles, he's okay, but Jax was shot tonight." 

"What the fuck?" Stiles slammed his mug down on the coffee table. "Are there hunters in your territory?" He was surprised to find himself as pissed as Macy looked.

"That's the thing, Dad doesn't think they are hunters. He said they don't smell of wolfsbane and they shot Jax with a silver bullet. It tore the shit out of him; silver is soft so it expands on impact, but it's not very accurate or effective as a rule so most hunters don't carry it. Robbie and Hakem were running with him, and they howled for help and growled the humans into place. Dad said Jax bit one too, and he was screaming and it all sounds a mess. They've got the humans back at base now."

"Fuck." Stiles scrubbed his hands over his face. "So what do we do?"

"It's the kind of thing Emissaries deal with, so Abbot is going up tomorrow. Well, later today. Dad wants you to go up too, to see how he and Abbot deal with things together, and because Jax is kind of freaking about biting one. Faru’s fucked off to Paris to see his brother and Robbie isn't great at empathy in this case, since her whole pack was killed by hunters. Maybe he thinks you can calm her down, too."

"Of course I'll go! What's the plan?"

"You'll meet Abbot for the 8:05 from Whitechapel. It gets to Berwick-Upon-Tweed at 13:37. It's the closest station to Wooler, which is the closest town to our base. One of the pack will meet you guys with a car and take you on from there." 

"Should I talk to Abbot, see if we need to bring anything?" 

"He's got a second workshop up there, if there's something he needs that won't be there he'll bring it himself." 

"Okay, so, pack for a few days somewhere colder than here?" His fingers were cold, so he wrapped them around the warm tea mug. It was cool having a running territory so far up north, he figured, but it must make the wolves crazy when something like this happened and the pack was divided.

"And get some sleep. I'm going to crash in with Mellie." She jerked her thumb towards Jackson's bedroom door. "We get up at 6:00, so that should be plenty of time for you to pack and get to the station to meet Abbot." She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and rubbed the back of her neck. "Sorry to eject you from your bed, but it's happening." She smiled at him and Stiles flushed right up. 

"Well, strictly speaking, I don't have permission to sleep in there anyway."

Macy laughed, then clapped him on the shoulder and stood. "Get some sleep Stiles. I can pretty much guarantee a long day tomorrow." 

Stiles cleared the tea mugs, flipped the lights off, and collapsed onto the sofa. He hauled the afghan off the back and wrapped it around himself. It was a long time before he fell asleep.

\-----

Morning came too soon and by the time he was really conscious, he was on the train with Abbot and they were probably an hour or so outside of London. Abbot was reading on his tablet, but when Stiles leaned over to ask him a question, Abbot held up a finger, opened a notes app, and typed a short message to him.

_I don’t know anything more than you do and we can’t discuss it anyway, no way to soundproof and too many people around._

Then he deleted it without saving. Stiles pulled out his phone, slipped some earbuds in, and listened to music as the countryside rushed past the windows.

\-----

The station at Berwick-Upon-Tweed was tiny and adorable, as you would expect from a place called Berwick-Upon-Tweed, but they disembarked quickly and made their way to the parking lot. There was a guy in his late 20s leaning on a beater scanning his phone, and when he looked up as they approached, Stiles recognized Tahmid, Faru’s oldest brother, the one with the kid. Tahmid embraced Abbot and shook hands with Stiles, then they dumped their luggage in the trunk and headed for Wooler and the rest of the wolves. 

As soon as they were away Stiles leaned forward, “What’s going on? Is Jackson okay? Robbie? Are they hunters?”

Tahmid shot Abbot a look, but with his nod of permission, Tahmid started talking. “Everyone’s okay so far, but we don’t really know what’s going on. Procedure in a case like this is to isolate the group and monitor them, then wait for the Emissary. It all only happened about twelve hours ago, you know.” 

“Were you with Jackson when he was shot?” 

“Hakem was. He and Alice and Jax were running together along the top of this ridge. Alice bit Jax’s tail and when he turned back to her he lost his footing and some loose rocks went out from under him. He sort of slid down the ridge and landed right on top of them.” 

The sound of the car wheezing along the road was the only thing they heard for a minute, before Stiles couldn’t help himself. “That’s embarrassing.” 

Tahmid huffed a laugh. “Yeah, actually I don’t think they meant to shoot him, the gun just kind of went off in the confusion.” 

“But he’s alright?”

“Yeah. Bullet went in through his armpit and spread all to hell like silver does against his ribcage.” Tahmid lost what color it was possible for him to lose. “We had to cut on him a bit, once we got him back to base, to get all the silver out before he could start healing. It was awful.” 

“Fuck.” Stiles muttered. “You’re sure he’s good though?” 

“Yeah. He’s all healed up and good as new. He’s a tough son of a bitch, you know? Cried, but didn’t make a sound. Even when George was in there digging around with his knife and Rolland and I were holding him down.”

“Fuck.” Stiles said again. 

\-----

They pulled up, to Stiles’s surprise, outside of some stone walls with a huge wooden gate in the road. Tahmid cranked his window down, then stuck his arm out and waved to someone on the top of the wall. 

“What the hell?” Stiles asked, craning his neck around. 

“Oh, it’s an eighteenth century fort.” Tahmid smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Gotta keep the Scots out, you know?” 

They pulled into a large stone courtyard, surrounded by the walls of the fort. In the back left corner there was a two story building that backed right up against the walls and butting up against that and traveling all along the back wall was a low building with windows to the interior. There were chimneys every thirty feet or so popping up out of the long building. 

Tahmid saw him checking everything out and waved a hand at the low building. “Those are the old barracks. The kids all sleep there in bunks. The big dining room and pack lounge are in there, too. That’s,” he indicated the two story building, “the old officers’ quarters. It’s been converted pretty well into a bunch of bedrooms for the adults.” 

They headed over to the officers’ quarters, where Robbie was propping up the door, smoking and glowering. Stiles had never seen her smoke before.

“Hallo, Abbot. Alright, Stiles?” She nodded at them and put the cigarette out on the sole of her sneaker, then flicked all the tobacco out with her ring finger and tucked the paper in her pocket. She was wearing tight blue jeans and swimming in a shawl collared fisherman sweater that Stiles knew to be Jackson’s. Her hair was piled up on top of her head and she’d clearly neither slept nor applied any makeup in over twenty-four hours. “They’re all in the small parlor and there’s some sandwiches and things.” 

They dropped their luggage in the entryway and Stiles followed the others further into the building. Robbie had immediately tucked herself under Tahmid’s arm as soon as he’d come within reach. 

It may have been called the small parlor, but it was furnished much more comfortably than the weird little Victorian parlor at the Book and Candle. There were squarish puffy leather sofas around most of the perimeter of the room, and the gaps were filled in with snug looking leather armchairs. The leather had some signs of wear on it, but overall looked well cared for and well loved. The swinging door opposite the one through which Stiles’s group had entered clearly led to the kitchen, as Mrs. Mirza was pushing through with a pitcher of something lemonadey in one hand and a plate of cookies in another. 

Stiles, in what was probably a shocking display of rudeness, bypassed Rolland, who was greeting Abbot, and made straight for Jackson, who was slouched and exhausted looking, wedged in the corner of one of the couches. Jackson’s eyes opened as Stiles came closer, and when Stiles held out a hand Jackson grabbed it and then allowed himself to be hauled up and into an embrace. 

Stiles gave him a quick clasp, and then, without really thinking about it, he shoved his hands up Jackson’s sweater, pushing the gray tweed out of the way and trying to twist Jackson around so he could see his back and armpits. 

“Uh, Stiles?”

“They said you were shot.” 

“I’m totally fine now though. Maybe I could take my shirt off for you later?” 

Stiles flushed up and dropped his hands to his sides. Jackson was smiling sardonically at him, and reached out to ruffle his hair. “Nice to know you care, little buddy.” 

“I’m taller than you are.” Stiles grumbled in response, ducking away from him. 

Just then, Rolland got their attention and called the meeting to order. Mrs. Mirza brought Stiles and Abbot sandwiches, since they’d missed lunch, and everyone tucked in to food and drink. Stiles leaned against Jackson, pressing him back into the corner of the couch, and Robbie sat at their feet, her back against Jackson’s shins. Brian gave a general update for those present, and it matched the story Stiles had gotten from Tahmid in the car, but then he moved on to new information. 

It seemed that the four suspected hunters had all been rounded up and brought back to the fort, where they’d been locked in a room together. The wolves had put them in together specifically so they would talk to each other. 

“We’ve had Alastair listening at the grating and taking notes on everything they’ve said, and he’s passed that on to Hakem, who’s been looking things up. Alastair, why don’t you start?” Brian finished. 

“Well, I definitely don’t think they’re hunters.” Alastair was a tall, spare man, with fussy facial hair and clipped way of speaking. Stiles remembered him vaguely from the pack meeting as part of one of the couples with young kids. 

“There are four of them, as I said. Two are brother and sister, and there’s an older one I think is an uncle. The fourth is the girl’s boyfriend, as far as I can tell.” 

“We took their wallets, got their IDs,” Hakem put in. “I’m all over their Facebook pages. The presumed uncle doesn’t have one, but that’s definitely the relationship between the other three.” 

Alastair nodded. “It’s quite a sad story, really. They’re from over near Dent ways, and it sounds like they were grasping at straws. The boyfriend heard a rumor that werewolves are real and they want the bite for the kids’ mother. She’s in hospital, dying of cancer. The uncle’s sister, as it happens.”

“Did you get any sense that this was a story, that they were playacting for your benefit?” Rolland asked. 

“No.” Alastair replied. “Looks like they did some research locally and they’ve been trying the big natural areas on full moons for the last couple of months, I’m not sure exactly how long. I’m shocked they didn’t stumble into Mayfair pack’s northern territory first, actually. That’s much closer to Dent than we are.” 

“What of this can you confirm, Hakem?” Brian asked. He rubbed his face, which was bristly with not having shaved recently. 

“I got into the NHS. The mother is stage three, pancreatic. She’s hanging on, but honestly . . .” he trailed off. 

“Even if they’d followed proper protocol, and she was in my territory, and fit with the pack, she probably wouldn’t survive the bite.” Rolland finished, sadly.

“Probably not.” 

Stiles’s heart seized, and then sank. The faces of all the wolves were grave, and when he leaned across Jackson to slip his now empty sandwich plate onto the end table, he stayed leaned in afterwards. Jackson wriggled his arm out from between them and slipped it around Stiles’s shoulders. 

“So now we decide what to do with them.” Rolland scrubbed blunt fingers through his salt and pepper hair and turned to Abbot. 

“Well, we’ve got a few bad options.” Abbot sighed. “We kill them, we cut them loose and take our chances, or we take their memories.”

Stiles jerked in his seat. He already didn’t want to kill them, even though they had shot Jackson. Jackson clamped down with his arm, though, and Stiles took the hint to keep it together. 

“Killing them is the last resort,” Rolland said, his face a mask of grief. “We must protect the pack, but killing them presents its own problems, and they aren’t motivated by greed or malice in seeking us out.” 

“I don’t like the option of cutting them loose.” Abbot shook his head. “Their information isn’t terribly accurate, but they know where we are, and how many faces do they know?”

Brian looked around at the room. “Jax shifted back after they shot him. they saw George and Alastair when they put them in the cell. And Hakem, you shifted back too, didn’t you?”

Hakem gave a short nod. 

“What are the issues with taking their memory?” Rolland asked. “That’s usually what we do if someone sees us.”

“The problem is that this isn’t a chance sighting.” Abbot explained. “They’ve been looking for us, talking about us with each other. If we wanted to remove any knowledge of werewolves from them, we’d have to remove every instance they discussed us, all of their previous full moon scouting expeditions, and who knows what else? When you take that much from a person it can . . .” he searched for the word, “destabilize them.” 

George, a tough-looking wolf who was propping up the corner of the room made a suggestion. “So we tell them we can’t help and ask them to promise that they won’t talk about us or look for us again.” 

“We never tell people the truth about us!” Abbot objected. “Misinformation is one of our first lines of defense. And how could we trust that they’d keep such a promise?”

“What about an Unbreakable Vow?” Stiles found himself asking. “Like in _Harry Potter_?”

Abbot scowled at him, “There’s no such thing as an unbreakable vow.” 

“Yeah, but do they know that?”

All the wolves stared at him. 

“Look, we know they’re poorly informed. Why not tell them the truth, that there’s nothing you can do, but give the wrong reasons as to why. Jackson bit one, right?” He looked at Jackson for confirmation, and he nodded, face fairly shocked. “So that person’s not going to turn into a werewolf. Tell them that the bite doesn’t turn anyone, that it’s only a myth and werewolves can only be born.”

“And where does the Unbreakable Vow come in?” Abbot asked, fairly snidely, in Stiles’s opinion. 

“We just explain that for the safety of the few wolves who are left, since they can only be born they’ve been dying out, you know, but for their safety, we’re going to have them promise to never discuss this again, not even with each other. Then we mock up some occult-style ceremony, draw some pentagrams on the floor, and light some candles. If we can get our hands on some copper chloride we can get blue flames going, that always impresses the tourists, right?”

“It’s still too dangerous,” Abbot shook his head. “They know where our territory is. You’re going back to America in a few weeks. The rest of us have to live with them knowing where we are every full moon.”

“Could you maybe take out just the locations they’ve searched?” Hakem asked from one of the couches across the room. “I know you can’t take everything, but could you just get the specific places they’ve been?”

Rolland considered. “I wouldn’t have to take the experiences themselves, just the names.” He looked thoughtful, but then frowned. “For all we know though, they printed out directions from the internet and left them on their desks at home.”

“We could call Mayfair.” Tahmid suggested. “We’re going to have to let them know anyway. They’ve got that one girl, Sheila, who’s been taken up for B&E a few times. Never goes down for it though. Hakem’s got their addresses. She could pop by and burgle their research.”

Hakem leaned forward, getting excited, “I should go with her, get on their machines. Some of it’ll be online. I can clear it all out before they get home.” 

Abbot looked aggrieved. “If we do this thing, we’re going to need this fake Unbreakable Vow ceremony to be really impressive.”

“Let me talk to them?” Stiles asked, surprising even himself. “They’ve got to be expecting that they’ll be interviewed soon.”

“Why you?” Brian asked, not meanly. 

“I’m American. If they do try to find me it’ll be much harder than trying to find any of you. And my name is a nickname.”

“I don’t want you in there alone with them.” Rolland frowned. “I’m responsible for your safety.”

“Leave the door open, or have people outside ready to come in if I get in trouble. I’ll be okay, I can do this.” 

And that was how, about an hour later, Stiles found himself standing outside the “cell.”

\-----

He knocked, neither forcefully nor tentatively, then called out, “My name is Stiles. I’m human and I’m coming in.” 

George was crowded up right behind him when he opened the door, but Stiles could see that the small group was all gathered back against the far wall. He gave a dorky little wave, then indicated George with a thumb over the shoulder. “My friend is going to stand right outside, so don’t think you’re going to be able to rush me or anything, okay? No one wants to hurt you, so just don’t give us a reason.” 

One of the younger boys nodded, and Stiles twisted himself sideways to get through the door, pulling it to after himself. 

The room was clearly not meant to be a cell, but more of a dorm. Stiles wondered if this was usually someone’s bedroom. There was a barred window on the wall opposite the door, and there had been a sheet or something attached to the window from the outside, so it was letting in light but you couldn’t see out. There were two twin beds, one on either side of the window, with a nightstand in between. Stiles sat in a puffy armchair that was in one of the corners near the door, and tried to look non-threatening. 

The others were all wedged up in front of the night stand and window, staring at him and not moving. They were never going to talk to him if Stiles couldn’t get them calmed down. 

“Wow, you guys really scared some people.” 

“WE scared THEM?” one of the boys burst out. 

“Well, you did shoot my friend.”

“That was an accident!” The other boy looked close to tears. 

“Hey, I get it, and they do, too. Let’s just talk, okay? I’m just here to find out what the story is, okay?”

The man nodded, then moved away from the group and sat on the end of one of the beds, facing Stiles. “What do you want to know?”

“Mostly why you came up here loaded for werewolf, but your names would be a good start.” 

They introduced themselves and seemed to relax a little into the telling of the tale. The oldest man was Alfie, his niece and nephew were Sean and Roberta, and Roberta’s boyfriend was Rick. 

They told the same story that Alastair and Hakem had figured out. Alfie’s sister, Danica, was dying and they were desperate to try and find a way to save her. Rick had heard that werewolves were real in a pub near where he worked, and the four of them had poured themselves into research and investigation ever since. 

“We can’t find anything out for sure though!” Sean was wound up in the story, and was actually yanking on his hair. He was the youngest and Stiles figured him for being about sixteen. “We’d almost given up and then last night happened! That big wolf just fell on us from above; it scared us half to death.” 

“I didn’t mean to shoot it,” Roberta said with dignity. “It landed right on top of Sean, I was trying to pull it away, and the the gun sort of went off in my hand.” 

Sean fixed huge eyes on Stiles. “Is he alright? The wolf?”

Time for some obfuscation. “Yeah,” Stiles said, gravely. “They got the silver out in time.” The others sort of sighed in relief without really sighing, but Stiles wanted them to feel more indebted to the wolves, so he elaborated. “They had to cut him open a little, to dig the bullet out. Pain medication doesn’t work on werewolves, but he’s going to live.” 

Sean’s face went white, and Stiles thought he might have pushed it a little bit. 

“So I guess you’re not going to help us?” Roberta fixed him with a gimlet eye. 

“It’s not that we’re not going to help you,” Stiles sighed. “It’s that we can’t.” 

Sean started to cry quietly, so Stiles addressed his remarks to Alfie to attempt to give him some privacy. 

“The bite is a Hollywood thing. All these wolves here, they were born that way. One of you got bit, right?” 

“Sean did.” Rick put his arm around Sean, and Stiles saw the bloody cuff of his jeans for the first time. 

He frowned. “Do you need medical attention?”

Sean wiped his face with the cuff of his shirt and shook his head. “It’s not deep.” 

Stiles got up and poked his head out the door. “Could you see if there’s a first aid kit anywhere in the place?” he asked George, who looked shocked. “We need some hydrogen peroxide.” He went back to his chair and sat down. 

“So what happens now?” Rick looked angry and defiant, but Stiles thought it was likely coming from fear. 

“Well, the problem is that you’ve seen some of the wolves and you know where they are. There aren’t many of them left, and they’re scared of you.” 

Roberta snorted and Rick looked incredulous. 

“Come on,” Stiles said. “What do you think would happen to them if you told anyone about them? To werewolves, humans finding out is the horror story.”

Sean gave another sniff, “We wouldn’t tell anyone. We just wanted to save our mum. There’s really nothing you can do?”

Stiles felt the lump in his own throat grow, and he swallowed hard, trying not to choke on it. “There’s really nothing.” He wavered for a bit, in indecision, then gave in and told them the truth, and the other reason he’d been determined to be the one who talked to them. 

“When I was eleven my mom died, too.” They were all watching him now, and it felt like the room was holding its breath. “She had a condition called frontotemporal dementia. It’s a kind of dementia that strikes young people. It was fast, but not fast enough, you know? I sat with her in the hospital for weeks waiting for the end. I didn’t know about the supernatural at the time, but I know that I’d have done anything to help her.” 

“If you’d known at the time, was there anything you could’ve done?” Alfie spoke for the first time since the introductions. 

Stiles shook his head. “There’s stuff you can do to make yourself heal faster, if you’ve got magic, and the werewolves can heal faster than humans, but I’ve never found a healing spell you can cast on someone else.” 

George came back with the first aid kit then, and Alfie made Sean sit all the way on the bed instead of perching on the edge so he could doctor his calf. 

Stiles left to ask about seeing them all to the bathroom, and then to find Mrs. Mirza to ask about the kitchen so he could put something together for the prisoners. 

\-----

There was a fair amount of running around for the rest of the day. He had to consult with Rolland, who had been standing right outside the door with George, just taking care to stay out of sight, and then he and Abbot went over the plan for the theatrical that would be taking place later that night. He finally went and explained the plan to the humans. They were demoralized, but all willing to agree to the ritual. None of them questioned its authenticity, so at least Stiles had done a good job of selling it. 

“This isn’t a trick?” Roberta narrowed her eyes at him. She and Rick remained the most suspicious of Stiles. All the life had gone out of Alfie when Stiles had explained that there were no supernatural solutions, and Sean was always on the verge of tears.

“The ones who are left don’t want you to see them.” Stiles was trying to get them all to put on blindfolds. He’d explained that one of the wolves was going to come in and take some of their memories, but he hadn’t explained how, thinking that would scare them. “You’ll be together the whole time, you can hold hands and everything, and it’ll only take a minute.”

They were all noticeably nervous about this part of the plan, until finally Alfie sighed and volunteered to go first. Roberta glared at him and blindfolded herself, and they all held hands and faced away from the door. 

Stiles opened it and Rolland came in and started working his way down the line. After he did Roberta he looked at Stiles and nodded; they’d agreed that he’d go through their memories and look for anything they had written down or password protected, so he could pass the information on to Hakem, who at that very moment was sitting with Sheila, the cat burglar, in a dark green Citroen two blocks away from the apartment the humans all shared. 

A bit later, Stiles came back with George and Alastair. They didn’t want to show them Jackson again, and Hakem was across the country going through their computers. The three of them led the humans through the darkened hallway, un-blindfolded, because the floor was uneven flags, and towards the officers’ wine cellar, where Stiles and Abbot had been setting up all day. It was going on midnight by the time they were ready to perform the “magic.”

Stiles had borrowed some sidewalk chalk from Alastair’s kid, and they’d drawn a huge pentagram on the floor, upright, because they were trying to convince the others that this was white magic. There was a small, perfect circle inside each point of the pentagram, just large enough for someone to stand inside. There was a much larger circle encompassing the whole pentagram, but that one was made with mountain ash. It was a cheap effect, but they’d decided to have George and Alastair walk around the outside, slapping at the barrier to create the resistance flash once the “ceremony” got started. The cellar was all stone and lit only with torches so the whole effect was quite creepy and authentic.

Stiles had explained everything that would happen, so once they were in the cellar, each of the humans gave the others a squeeze and took their places in the circles. Abbot stood in the circle in the topmost point and slowly raised his arms to about shoulder height. 

George and Alastair started slapping the circle, walking in a clockwise direction. Stiles picked up some of the pre-made packets they’d worked on and quietly walked to each of the torches. He took some tongs and lowered each packet into the flames as he made his rounds. They were filled with copper chloride and a few other things Abbot had put together to make the torches burn blue. 

The two of them, Rolland, and Brian had worked out five statements the group would swear to, with the understanding that Abbot, who had an affinity for fire, would light up one of the legs of the pentagram after each one. Stiles finished making his rounds and backed away to watch.

“I will not betray this pack.” Abbot intoned.

“I so swear,” the humans repeated. One line of the pentagram lit with yellow flame. 

“I will not discuss this misadventure with anyone, excepting those who shared it.” 

“I so swear.” Two lines of flame.

“I will not seek another werewolf.” 

“I so swear.” Three lines of flame.

“I will not attempt to recover lost memories.” 

“I so swear.” Four lines.

“I hold myself responsible for the safety of this pack and my fellows.” 

“I so swear.” 

As the fifth line of flame lit the darkness, Abbot made all five lines flash, then he changed the air pressure of the room. The point of this was to make them all think that the magic was binding them, but really he was just popping their ears. 

Stiles’s moment had come, so he closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and all the torches went out. 

\-----

About a half an hour later the unmasked wolves, the humans, and Stiles were all gathered in the entrance hall. Someone had gone out earlier and found their car and driven it halfway home, and now George and Alastair were going to drive them, blindfolded, to the new location. It was all in the name of making sure they wouldn’t be able to back track their steps and find out where the pack ran on full moons. 

They were taking them out one by one, as it was the middle of a cloudy night and even the almost full moon wasn’t bright enough to light the courtyard. Somehow, Stiles ended up alone with Sean. 

“How do you stand it?’ he asked in the darkness. 

Stiles didn’t pretend he didn’t know what Sean meant. “Some days you can’t get out of bed. And some days you can’t stand to talk about her or see her photograph. And some days you can’t figure out why the world is still going on as though nothing has happened. But some days you can. And gradually, if you give it enough time, the days you can start to outnumber the days you can’t. And if you were lucky enough to have a good mom, one who loved you, you start to remember that that is what she wanted for you.”

“And that’s enough?”

“It has to be.” 

They were both silent for a few moments, until George came back to collect Sean so they could get on the road. 

Sean was just putting his blindfold on when he stopped and looked at Stiles. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever meet again, but thank you.”

“Good luck, Sean.”

The boy nodded and knotted his black length of cloth over his eyes. George gave Stiles a sad smile, then gently took Sean’s elbow, and led him out. 

Stiles locked the door behind them and headed back towards the stairs to the cellar. He met Abbot coming up. “Don’t worry about it tonight. We can clean up in the morning, not that there’s much mess to speak of.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

“Goodnight.”

They parted and Stiles made his way, not to the guest room where his duffle lay on the bed, but to Jackson’s room, which Robbie had pointed out earlier. He knocked gently, then let himself in without waiting for a response. The room was very like the “cell” the captives had been in earlier, though instead of two twin beds there was one full, and there was actually a fireplace. Jackson had clearly had a fire earlier, too, as there were coals still glowing in the grate. That and the moonlight spilling through the window were the only sources of illumination, but Stiles could still see Jackson clearly.

He was reclining on his back, with the white coverlet and sheet pushed down to his waist, and had his left hand behind his head, which made his bicep look huge. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and when Stiles paused on the threshold after shutting the door, he let his eyes slide to wolf eyes, so Stiles could see the electric blue rings.

“You okay?” Jackson asked quietly. 

Stiles mutely shook his head. Jackson reached down with his right hand and flipped the covers back on that side of the bed. Stiles skinned out of his flannel, jeans, tennis shoes, and socks, then tiptoed over the cold flags of the floor and crawled into bed in his long sleeved t-shirt and boxers. He pulled the covers up, and Jackson slid his arm around Stiles and pulled him into his chest, where Stiles quietly, and thoroughly, burst into tears.


	13. Monday, July 14, 2014

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags!

When Stiles woke it was cold in the room, but under the covers with Jackson wrapped around him, he was very warm. He had rolled almost all the way over on his stomach, but was still sideways enough that Jackson had a hand up his shirt on his belly and his left leg thrown over both of Stiles’s thighs. Stiles tried to wiggle free, and Jackson just clamped down on him more tightly, grumbling into the crook of his neck. 

Stiles couldn’t get out, but finally managed to roll over so they were facing each other, and from the new position he was able to use his arms to push Jackson off him. 

“Whadder you doing?” he grumbled at Stiles, yawning. 

“You were clamped onto me like you’d dragged me back to your den yourself, jackass.” Stiles stretched in place and rucked up his hair. 

“Sorry about that.” Jackson opened his eyes and smirked. “I don’t usually let one night stands spend the night.”

“I’m not a one night stand!” Stiles attacked, or, attempted to do so, but Jackson grabbed his wrists and rolled on top of him. Stiles squawked at him and tried to use his legs, but Jackson collapsed so he was holding him down with his whole weight. 

“You’re such a pleasant person when you’re asleep,” he purred and rubbed his head on Stiles’s sternum. 

“Get off me, doofus!” Stiles was laughing, but he was also getting a little turned on and needed to extricate himself before that became all too apparent. Jackson nipped at his collarbone, and that did it. Stiles tried to squirm his groin away, but he was laid out flat. 

Jackson _licked_ the place he had just bitten and looked up at Stiles with eyes suddenly gone dark in the morning light. “Can I blow you?”

“Whahuh?”

“You smell good and I’m horny. Can I blow you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Excellent.” He slid down Stiles’s body and pushed the t-shirt up so he could bite gently at Stiles’s belly, then yanked his boxers off so suddenly that Stiles squeaked. He was so hard it hurt, and Jackson’s mouth closing around him burned. 

“Jax!” He gasped out. 

“What?” Jackson took his mouth off and started licking and nibbling at the skin around and under Stiles’s balls.

“This isn’t a thing, right?” He gasped again. “Like, this doesn’t mean anything?”

“Nope,” Jackson said, then licked all the way up his cock and swallowed all the way down to the root. He came up for air and started stroking with his right hand. “I like you, you like me. We’re just getting off.” He closed his lips over just the head and sucked hard. 

“Okay, good. Just getting off.” Stiles was clenching his fists with the effort not to come, something that probably would have helped more if he’d been able to look away from the sight of Jackson between his legs.

Less than two minutes later, after some particularly powerful suction and a tongue thing that Stiles was going to have to pay more attention to in future, he let out a sort of half cry and started yanking on Jackson’s hair. Jackson reached up with his left hand and grabbed Stiles’s wrist, holding it back to the mattress. He did the tongue thing again, and then he was swallowing, as Stiles came, and came, and came. 

Stiles collapsed to the bed, like a marionette whose strings had all been cut, and Jackson surged up, planted his face in Stiles’s neck, and shoved a hand down his own boxers. Stiles tried to do something, but ended up waving his arms ineffectually as Jackson gasped into his shoulder and came, all over Stiles’s soft cock and balls. 

Jackson had enough muscle control to fall to the side instead of right on top of Stiles, and he hauled Stiles in and kissed him, deep and steady. Stiles could taste his semen in Jackson’s mouth, and found that he was intensely turned on, although even he didn’t think he could get it up again quite yet. 

They finally fell apart, breathing heavily on each of their individual pillows, and Jackson brought his hand to his mouth to lick his own release from the webbing of his thumb. 

“So,” Stiles said. “That was a thing that happened.”

“You okay?” Jackson’s expression was really hard to read. Smug? Worried? There wasn’t enough blood in Stiles’s brain to tell.

“I’m all kinds of okay.”

“So, we should probably do that again sometime.” 

“Yes. Definitely. It would be the responsible thing.”

“I mean, you’re going home in a few weeks anyway.”

“And you’re so busy with school and work and everything.”

“So it’d be irresponsible to try to take the time to find somebody else.”

“Exactly.”

“And neither of us has feelings for the other.”

“That would be so inconvenient.”

“So there’s nothing wrong with it if we keep hooking up.”

“Precisely.”

They lay there looking at each other for another few moments, then Stiles burst out laughing. Jackson started laughing too and rolled towards him. They let the nerves and adrenaline drain out of themselves with laughter, then Stiles sat up suddenly and snatched Jackson’s boxers off his ankles, so he could use them to clean himself up. 

\-----

Stiles was able to sneak out of the room and shower before anyone from the pack saw or smelled him, and apparently Jackson had the same success, because nobody said anything at the very, very late group breakfast. Rolland announced that in light of everything they’d been through that weekend, he was extending their trip. Anyone who needed to get back to town was welcome to go, but if any of them just wanted to take some time, they were welcome to that as well. 

Tahmid and his wife and kids needed to head back that night, but the rest of the Mirzas and Jackson all decided to stay, so Stiles was delighted when Abbot said Stiles could stay, too. He and Robbie raided the kitchen and packed a knapsack with sandwiches and orange squash and bottled water, and then he lit out into the not-terribly-wild of Northumberland National Park, with three wolves leading the way. 

After wandering and exploring for a good long while, they found a nice rise where they could have a small picnic. Stiles had tied a bag to the knapsack with a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt for each of them, so they could shift back to eat without getting too cold, and the four of them sat on a plaid blanket with the wind blowing in their faces, mostly gazing out at the scrub on the rolling hills, but also talking some. 

Hakem was exhausted from being up all night and breaking and entering and hacking, but he said that running around and putting his nose to the wind would help him keep his schedule straight when they went back down to London the next morning. He’d set up key-logging software on the devices of all of the humans, and he’d need to get that fully organized first thing when they got back.

They talked about this and that, and Robbie eventually unbent from her grim worry enough to flop across Jackson’s lap and help explain being a Muslim werewolf to Stiles. Like a great deal of Whitechapel, the Mirzas were from Bangladesh, but they were devout in different ways. 

“It’s not a problem for them that I’m C of E, for example,” she said. “But at the same time, I know a lot more about Islam than your average incredibly white girl.”

“We don’t make it to mosque as often as we should,” Hakem admitted. “And we mostly don’t even pray five times a day. But we do pray, we read the Koran, and we try to eat Halal.”

“I’m sorry if this is an offensive question, but do you eat things you killed in your werewolf form?” Stiles asked. 

“What?” Robbie sat up, indignant. “No! Who does that?”

“Uh, Derek.” Stiles replied. Jackson started laughing. 

It was that kind of day all around; a golden day that Stiles knew he’d always remember. After lunch they shifted back and led him to favorite spots to run. Robbie got some of her playfulness back, and play bowed and picked fights with the boys. They found a narrow stream and she bowled Jackson into it, and Stiles ended up climbing a tree before she could do the same to him. It might have been summer, but it was too cold for swimming. 

The four of them returned to the fort just before the dinner hour, sweaty, dirty, and starving. They hustled through showers one after the other in the shared hallway bathroom, and gathered around the end of the dining table. Rolland and Abbot and most of the other wolves had headed south that afternoon, but George and Brian were still there, and the eight of them all had dinner together, passing dishes and telling stories about when the Mirza kids were little (the family had all thought that Faru had been born human until one night at dinner when he was about nine; he sneezed and transformed in shock, then burst into tears.)

Hakem went to bed right after the meal concluded, and the adults adjourned back to the small parlor, while Stiles, Jackson, and Robbie did the dishes. Robbie went off to bed with a hug and kiss for both of the boys, and Stiles was about to bid Jackson goodnight when he was hauled in for his own, very different goodnight kiss. 

“Come sleep with me?”

Stiles flushed up. “Yeah.”

He was better able to pay attention to the blowjob that time, but made Jackson stop before he came so that Stiles could try some stuff, too, instead of just laying there and squeaking. As it turned out, sex was just as much fun with repetition. Stiles fell asleep that night naked, exhausted, achy, and happy, with a werewolf in much the same condition at his back.


	14. Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Stiles let himself in the side door of The Lamb the next afternoon, half-humming and half-singing “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” under his breath. He ran into Macy as she was coming out of the laundry room, and she dropped her basket of clean sheets on the floor to snatch him up in a hug. 

“Alright, then?”

He hugged her back. “Yeah, everyone’s okay.”

“God, I hate when something happens and the pack is separated. Thank god Jax is working tonight so I can murder him with hugs and all.”

Stiles laughed and stepped back. She ran her hands through her hair, which was unbound as she wasn’t in the kitchen yet, and looked sort of wild. She picked up the laundry basket and led him towards the stairs and up to the second floor. 

Stiles offered to carry the basket, but she flashed and rolled her eyes at him, wordlessly. 

“Listen, sweetheart, this is a big imposition, but I was wondering if you’d do us a favor.”

“You know I will.” Stiles answered right away. 

“Thanks, Luv. Thing is, this morning I got a call for a huge booking for this weekend, and I’ve had to give up your room. You’d be welcome to stay with us upstairs, if you don’t mind. We do have a guest room. I think Dad was trying to give you some independence putting you down here.”

“Oh, that’s fine. Why don’t I stay with Jax, as a matter of fact? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.” Stiles got a very clear mental picture of Jackson’s dick at that moment. He hadn’t really had the time in the last thirty six hours to give it the kind of close study it deserved. The situation could only be helped by staying nearby. 

“If you two think you can make it through the weekend together, that’d be great. You could have the room back after you finish with Abbot on Monday.”

“Great, thanks.” They reached his door and Stiles unlocked it. “I’ll check with him when he comes in for his shift tonight.”

\-----

After Stiles got everything tidied away from the weekend jaunt he had a nice shower; it was still sort of the middle of the afternoon at that point, so none of the guests were really around anyway. He puttered aimlessly around his shoebox room for a few minutes, but finally gave up and headed next door. 

Abbot was in the lab, checking on some of his experiments. Stiles propped himself on a stool and watched for awhile, until the jiggling of his knee started to get on Abbot’s nerves and he told Stiles to wash all the glassware in one of the sinks. 

He did that, then let himself into the little storeroom/bookroom and started poking around. Most of the books Abbot used regularly were on shelves under the counters in the lab. Two of the walls in the little storeroom had sample cabinets, like huge card catalogues in old libraries, but the drawers held different herbs and mosses, and some of them had rare magical ingredients, like the drawers labelled Frog’s Hair, Virgin’s Tears, and Hen’s Teeth.

The wall on the back of the building had some modern filing cabinets set up between the two windows. Unlike the windows in the lab, which had been painted over black, these were frosted from top to bottom. No one could see in, but the light still came through and the windows fairly glowed at that hour of the late afternoon. 

Stiles was mostly interested in the books, though. The outside wall that would be next to the alley - next to his room at The Lamb, in fact, had a built-in bookshelf, and there were several rare volumes in Abbot’s collection. All the way at the bottom was a section of old Druidic texts that were covered in dust, with ancient, but clearly not original, bindings. 

Stiles wiped the books down with his t-shirt and settled cross-legged next to the shelf to read. He was forced to read slowly, as the ink was very faded and the handwriting was spider-thin, with lots of unnecessary flourishes. The writing also had that thing where some of the ‘s’s were written as ‘f’s, the way that old photos of posters in textbooks showed. At least they were in English.

The descriptions contained in the book were fascinating. Deaton was fairly circumspect about the origins of Druid-magic, which Stiles could certainly understand, since so many of them relied upon blood magic or human sacrifice. Some of the spells contained in the old book were exceedingly grim, especially the chapter about how to lift a blight from the land. 

Stiles was just about to start a chapter called, “Facrifice of the Mafter and Elevation of the Apprentice” when Abbot came through the door, evidently looking for him. 

“I’m heading home, I just wondered if you’d be working late here tonight.”

Stiles looked at his watch and saw that Jackson would already be on shift at The Lamb. “No, I should head out, too.” 

He closed his book and made to slip it back onto the shelf when he saw Abbot’s half-smile. “That’s a hell of a dense book.”

“Yeah. Some really interesting stuff about old Druidic practices, though.” 

“That old magic is so archaic, no one uses it any more. If you want to read something useful, I can give you a list.”

“That would be great, thanks!” Stiles was still going to read that old book though. Deaton was deeply wary of anything to do with the Nemeton, but maybe it would give Stiles some ideas about how to repair it. From what Deaton explained, the reason so much bad shit kept showing up in Beacon Hills was that the Nemeton was damaged. He had a feeling Deaton knew how to fix it, but the enigmatic bastard wouldn’t say anything on the subject.

\-----

Jackson was happy to have Stiles come stay with him for the long weekend, and Stiles crammed a cheese and pickle sandwich down his throat while texting one-handed on his phone to Lydia. The Hale-McCall Pack had had a busy full moon, too. One of the alternate names for July’s full moon turned out to be the Mead Moon, and some faeries had come through a portal or something on the preserve, and proceeded to get drunk and hit on a bunch of unsuspecting mortals. 

Lydia and Peter working together had managed to free the mortals from the contracts they’d accidentally made with the faeries, and the faeries weren’t terribly put out when they had to go home sans human consorts. Lydia said that she and Peter thought that they actually amused the faeries terribly, as they wouldn’t stop snickering when they went back through. The only lasting damage appeared to be several sexuality crisises among otherwise straight denizens of Beacon Hills. 

Stiles finished up his dinner and brought his things up to the bar so Jackson wouldn’t have to clear his table. Jackson tipped his chin at Stiles in a wait-a-second gesture, so Stiles lingered until he came over. 

“Want to just pack your stuff up and move over now?”

Stiles grinned; that was what he’d been hoping would happen. “Yeah? You don’t mind?”

“Nah. Let ‘em have the room back. If you get bored of me you can sleep on the couch.”

Stiles did not lean over the bar and kiss him, but it was a very near thing. 

\-----

Jackson was closing that night, and Stiles still had his spare keys from the weekend, so Stiles ended up making room for his clothes in the closet and stowing his luggage by himself. He helped himself to some juice and watched a little tv, then visited his small forest of hygiene products in the bathroom. He ended up taking a shower, as he was a little dusty from sitting on the floor that afternoon, and then wandered around in his Legend of Zelda pajama pants. 

It felt impossibly decadent to have that much space. Jackson’s flat wasn’t large, but his room at The Lamb would have fit several times over, so it was wonderful all the same. He fell asleep alone that night, but he was snuggled in a king size bed with hugely fluffy pillows and high thread-count sheets, about as comfortable as he'd ever been.


	15. Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Stiles didn’t actually see Jackson again until the following night, after he finished with Abbot for the day and had dinner with Robbie and Faru, who was back from Paris and quietly furious that he had missed everything up north. Jackson had definitely been to the flat and slept at some point, but he’d gotten up early to swim at the community center (so said his note) and Stiles had slept through the whole thing. 

“Hey!” He said when he came through the door to find Jackson set up at the kitchen table again, studying. He divested himself of his bag and shoes and crossed to throw himself on the couch. 

“Hey.” Jackson scrubbed his face with his hands, visibly detaching himself from the effort of focusing on whatever he was working on. He got up and stretched, then came over and draped himself artistically over the armchair. “So, I should tell you something.”

“That’s fairly ominous for our first day of living together.” Stiles sat up though, recognizing Jackson’s “I’m nervous but trying to hide it” tells. 

“Well, if you don’t like it it’s your fault.”

Stiles laughed; he couldn’t help himself. He was starting to find grumpy Jackson hilarious. 

“I, uh. I called Danny today.” Jackson appeared to be attempting to make eye contact with the ceiling, but Stiles remembered their conversation about Danny and knew this was a big deal for him. 

“And?” He sat up and leaned towards Jackson, excited and confident that Danny would have been glad to get the phone call, former lizard or not.

“You were right.” Jackson ground out. “He was pissed I hadn’t called sooner, but happy I called now.” Jackson swallowed and finally looked at Stiles. “And he’s coming to visit in like a week, so if you don’t want him to know about us, you’re going to have to move back to The Lamb.”

Stiles, surprising even himself, gave a triumphant yell and jumped off the couch to land on Jackson. “I knew it! Ha! I am victorious!”

“Ouch, son of a bitch!” Jackson half-caught him and protested feebly, but he was laughing now, too. “So do you care if he knows?”

“Nah, doesn’t matter to me. I mean, I could have a worse escort to show me around the bases, know what I’m saying?” Stiles said this while making his face the picture of innocence. 

“Jerks don’t get blowjobs, Stilinski,” Jackson said, flatly imperious.

Stiles made his eyes even wider. “So you’ve never had one?”

Jackson stood up - just fucking stood up! - while still holding him, and took a few quick steps across the floor and through the bedroom door. He threw Stiles on the bed (Stiles landed with a squawk and without his dignity) and then crawled on top of him. 

They had a short fight where they each tried to strip the other of his clothes first, and Jackson won because Stiles was laughing so hard. He stopped abruptly when Jackson swallowed his dick (swear to god, the guy had no gag reflex; Stiles wasn’t frighteningly big or anything, but Jackson didn’t even pause.)

Stiles propped himself up on his hands, panting hard now, and reached down to grab Jackson’s ankle. He tugged it until Jackson shifted around, laying back down so that Jackson was kneeling over him. 

“Hello, beautiful,” he said to the cock pointing towards Jackson’s navel. It really was beautiful. Large balls, but they stayed tucked up close to the root, and the cock itself had those indents along the underside. The tip was a big red helmet, spongy and sweet. 

Stiles pulled it down towards himself and got his tongue all over the head, then sucked on it hard; that was what Jackson was doing to his and it felt bloody fantastic, pardon his English. He went down - up? - as far as he could go a few times, but kept the hand clamped around the base, milking Jax’s cock a little bit. It was honestly getting a little hard to concentrate with what was happening down below. 

Jackson came off his dick and started putting his mouth all over Stiles’s balls again, then suddenly he was licking underneath them, and Stiles’s legs shot open like he’d been electrocuted. He took Jackson’s cock out of his mouth so he didn’t accidentally bite it, and absentmindedly tried to remember to stroke instead. 

Jackson’s mouth went away for a second, and then suddenly there was a wet finger rubbing over Stiles’s asshole and the mouth reentered the proceedings up at the head of his cock. Stiles gave a strangled scream, and came suddenly, shocking himself. 

Jackson’s laugh sounded delighted and a minute later he was shifted around, licking and nuzzling Stiles’s neck while he ground his own hard cock into the groove of Stiles’s cum-splattered hip. Stiles got his hand to start obeying directions again and latched onto that dyed black hair, using it to direct Jackson up to his mouth. He had a stroke of inspirational genius, and the other hand sought out one of the nipple rings. A quick half turn, and Jackson was coming, too.

They lay together, languidly exhaling into the humid air they’d created with sweat and panting breaths, reaching out to trace the shape of each other’s skin. Stiles was almost asleep when Jackson asked out of the blue, “You don’t mind if Danny knows?”

“Nah, course not.”

“And you don’t mind if I ask him not to tell anyone else? I’m not ready for the rest of Beacon Hills to know.”

“It’s okay with me.”

“You don’t need to like, share every detail of this with McCall?”

“Let’s make a pact that this will be the last time we ever talk about Scott post-coital,” Stiles grimaced.

Jackson huffed a quiet laugh.

“Yeah, you know, I know I’m supposed to want to talk about every aspect of this with my best friend, but I feel like this is private, you know? In the words of the great Willow Rosenberg, I’d happily paint him a blurry watercolor, but I don’t think I’d give him a diagram. And if you don’t want anyone back home to know at all, that’s fine with me.”

“People here are going to know.”

“They’re your pack. Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah, I mean, Mace and Robbie will be annoying about it, but they’re like my sisters, so that’s their job, right?”

“So we’re out in London, but not in California. That works for me.”

“Yeah, we’ll just keep this for ourselves.”


	16. Thursday, July 17, 2014 - Thursday, July 24, 2014

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags. :)

Living with Jackson was surprisingly easy. Stiles was excited to have a kitchen again, as well as so much space to move around. They had a few little squabbles because Stiles didn’t so much occupy a place as colonize it, but as long as Stiles wasn’t loud while Jackson was studying, life was harmonious. And with more blowjobs than ever before!

Abbot had been getting on Stiles’s nerves a little since Northumberland. He wasn’t happy with the solution to the desperate humans problem, even though Hakem was tracking their internet and computer use and said that there wasn’t anything to worry about yet. He’d snapped at Stiles when Stiles had cut himself on some glassware he was trying to wash in one of the large sinks in the lab and sent him down to the first floor of the bookstore to beg first aid from Felicity. She’d rolled her eyes and patched Stiles up, but when he got back upstairs Abbot had already cleaned everything up - glassware and blood included - and just told him to go read in the study room for a while. Stiles had been happy to comply. 

He and Jax both had Sunday free so they took Mellie to a larger park and kicked a soccer ball around with her until she was ready to pass out. They had fish and chips with vinegar afterward in a park overlooking the Thames, and on the way home, Jax told Mellie an outlandish story about the Further Adventures of Princess Lydia and the Dragon. 

Robbie had to work on Wednesday and Faru had been slammed with studying, so they’d both had to cancel their dinner date with Stiles, but he’d gotten some Thai takeout for himself and ate it with gusto on Jackson’s couch in his pajamas while he watched Futurama on Netflix. 

By Thursday, the day before Danny’s arrival in London, Jackson was wound as tight as a watch, even as he tried to study. Stiles was doing the dishes after dinner and when a pan slipped out of his hands and clanged against the side of the sink, Jax had leapt from his chair in alarm and knocked a textbook off the table. 

“You okay there, buddy?” Stiles asked, wiping his hands with a dishtowel. 

Jackson shot Stiles an irritated glance and started gathering up his papers, making piles of things. He’d muttered that morning that he wanted to tidy the place up before Danny got there, especially because Danny would be sleeping on the couch, so the living room would be kind of his bedroom. He'd worked hard all week to get ahead on his schoolwork and he’d taken some extra shifts at The Lamb so he could have a few days off while Danny was in town. All the work and the stress of preparing was obviously combining with the nerves of not having seen Danny in a year and a half, and he seemed like he was about to snap. 

“So, buttsex. Yes?” Stiles suggested. 

“What?” Jackson dropped the pile of papers he was trying to stack standing up on the bookshelf and they hit the floor and scattered. 

“You wanna try it?” Stiles snatched up a dishtowel and started drying the pans he’d stacked on top of the stove’s burners as he’d finished washing. “I mean, I assume you’ve done it before. You wanna try it with me?” 

“Um. Yeah. I’ve done it before. You wanna try it?” Jackson stammered a little and Stiles shot a look at him out of the corner of his eye. He’d flushed red all the way up to his ears and down his neck to his shirt collar. 

“Yeah, I mean, you know what you’re doing, right?” Stiles started clamoring around, putting pans back in their cabinets. He’d made enchiladas for dinner, so he’d used almost all of the pans in Jackson’s small but decent kitchen. 

“Uh, which way did you want to do it? I mean, uh, do you want to . . .” Jackson trailed off while he picked up the papers and tapped the edge on the table to straighten them. 

“Which way do you like best?” Stiles started wiping down the counters. 

“Well, I uh, I usually top. I’m good at it. I don’t hate it the other way, but it’s not my favorite thing.”

“Okay, well.” Stiles was flushing up now; he could feel the blood in his ears. “Um, okay. So. I’m gonna take a shower then.” He threw the dishtowel on the counter and started towards the bathroom. He had to pass Jackson on the way, and Jax reached out with his left hand and snagged him by the pocket. He reeled Stiles in and kissed his temple.

“We don’t have to do it, and we don’t have to do it like that if we do.” His right hand settled on Stiles’s hip and he absently rubbed his iliac crest with the edge of his thumb. 

Stiles finally met his eyes. “No, I wanna try it. You know what you’re doing.” 

“You’ll like it.” Some of the cocky was coming back into Jackson’s smile. “I get good reviews.” 

Stiles goosed him in the side and Jackson jumped away, laughing. Stiles turned his back on Jackson and snagged his t-shirt by the back of his neck. He hiked the t-shirt up over his head and dropped it on the floor. Then he was through the door of the bathroom, and as he closed it behind himself, he saw Jackson pick the shirt up with a sigh and head towards the bedroom. Probably to add it to the hamper. 

——-

Stiles sort of hoped that everyone felt this awkward jamming soapy fingers up their butt before the first time they did anal. 

——-

He walked into the bedroom a few seconds later with his hair sticking up wetly and a towel slung around his hips to see the bed turned down and Jackson just throwing his jeans into the hamper. His boxer briefs were stretched taut across his ass and the span of his shoulders was just. Beautiful. He turned around as he shucked his shorts and Stiles saw that he was already half hard. They’d seen each other naked plenty of times recently, so Stiles yanked the towel off and tossed it into the hamper as well. 

He jumped on the bed and flopped across it width-wise on his belly. Jackson leaned over and smacked him on the ass, then stretched out next to him and gave him a little squeeze-shake on the meat of his butt cheek. 

“So what should I do?” Stiles asked, rolling to face Jackson. 

“Want me to blow you and finger you a little?” Jackson’s hand slid across Stiles’s hip and he started fondling Stiles’s still mostly soft cock. 

“Hell, yes.” He squirmed up the bed so he was on his back and spread his legs. They’d done this plenty of times in the last few weeks, and Stiles knew that two fingers up his ass made blowjobs even better. This time Jackson slow-played it a little more than usual, keeping Stiles hard but not really going for it. This time he also got three fingers. 

“Ow, motherfucker, ow!” That third finger made a big difference.

“Shit, sorry. Need more lube.”

It wasn’t long before Stiles felt his asshole relax, although he was getting to the point where he thought they’d been in this bed for roughly one thousand years. The rest of him was certainly tense enough, and they were definitely going to have to change the sheets no matter what the semen situation ended up being because he was sweating like a stevedore. He reached down and jerked on Jackson’s dyed black hair. 

“Okay, let’s go.” 

“You sure you’re ready?” Jackson licked the head of Stiles’s cock, which had returned to nail-hammering levels of hardness since the introduction of Finger #3. 

“Yes, fuck! Let’s do this! Now, asshole!”

“You have the sweetest pillow-talk.” Jackson huffed a little half-laugh as he twisted his fingers once more before pulling them out and leaning back on his knees. “How do you want it? It’s probably going to be most comfortable on your hands and knees.” 

Stiles sighed a little. “Dude, like I can even support my own weight right now.” But he flopped over on his belly and dragged himself up to all fours. Jackson rubbed the small of Stiles’s back with a sort of rough brusque fondness. 

He leaned over Stiles and his cock poked rudely at Stiles’s balls, making him jump and, embarrassingly enough, squeak. 

“Um, hey. So. Do you want me to wear a condom?” Jackson had the bottle of lube in one hand and Stiles saw an uncertain look on his face when he glanced back over his shoulder. “I’ve never done it with anyone who knew I was a werewolf before.”

“Oh, uh. You don’t have to. I mean. I do know you’re a werewolf.”

Jackson flushed up and almost smiled a little. “Okay.” He popped open the lube and spread some over his own dick, then grabbed a washcloth that was somehow on the bed and wiped his hands. He rubbed Stiles’s back again. 

“Okay, I’m going to go in a little, and then back off, and go in a little farther each time, so you have time to get used to it. Tell me if it’s too fast, okay?” He rubbed the fleshy head of his cock against Stiles’s asshole, not trying to go in yet, just up and down. Stiles was almost painfully turned on. 

Then he started to push inside.

It didn’t hurt - they’d spent forever stretching him out and he was slippery and turned on as fuck, but it was tight and there was so much pressure. He could actually feel the point when Jackson got the whole head inside and his ring clenched on the other side of the helmet. The whole time, Jackson was stroking and rubbing him; his shoulders, his arms, his sides, his thighs. By the time he figured Jackson was about halfway in his arms were shaking too badly to support himself, so he dropped to his elbows and let his head rest on his hands. 

Jackson groaned with the movement and froze. “Jesus. Shit. Okay, don’t move for a sec!”

Stiles breathed deeply until Jackson started inching in again. He finally felt Jackson’s hips flush with his ass and their balls brushing together. He reached a hand behind himself and patted Jackson’s side a little randomly. 

“Okay. You ready for some more movement?” Jackson’s breath was wet on the side of his neck, and Stiles could feel Jax’s muscles and chest hair on his back. Jackson was propping himself up with his left arm and had stretched the right around Stiles’s ribs so that his palm rested on Stiles’s sternum. 

“Yeah. Not too much right away!”

“I gotcha.” Jackson started moving slowly, and Stiles rocked his forehead against the sheets. Jax lifted his torso a little away from Stiles and on the next inward thrust his cock bumped forcefully against Stiles’s prostate. 

“JESUS FUCK!” Stiles swore as his body jerked involuntarily. 

Jackson laughed lowly, “Okay, sweetheart?”

“Again! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Jackson was well aware of the location of his prostate, having become plenty familiar with it during blowjobs over the last few weeks, but it was so much more intense when he was filled up and being fucked. 

They rocked against each other, out of sync at first, but finally found a rhythm. Stiles was panting heavily into the bed and could hear himself swearing, but wasn’t sure what he was saying. Suddenly, without much warning at all, he gasped out a choking cry and felt all of the muscles in his core seize up as he came all over the bed. 

His thoughts buzzed out for a moment but the next thing he was noticed was Jackson muttering, “Shit, shit, sorry, sorry,” in his ear as he tried to inch the Ent-sized tree trunk out of Stiles’s ass. The ass in question was spasming with sensation as aftershocks zinged through Stiles’s body. The second he was clear Stiles crumpled to the bed. 

“Can I come on you?” Jackson panted from above him. 

“Yuh-huh.” 

Jackson collapsed on top of him and bit and kissed his neck. He propped himself on his left hand and jerked off with his right, rubbing into Stiles’s crease but staying away from his entrance. Less than a minute later, Jackson groaned and Stiles felt the wet slap of Jax’s cum explode all over Stiles’s lower back. 

Jackson crumpled to the bed but aimed his body slightly to the side so he didn’t crush Stiles. They lay there panting for a few minutes until Jax rolled off Stiles a little more and onto his back. He dragged Stiles to him so that Stiles’s head was draped on his neck and one of Stiles’s arms was slung across his waist. 

“Goddammit, Jax!” Stiles finally sighed. 

“What? Did I hurt you after you came? Were you too sensitive? I’m sorry about that.” Jackson craned his neck a little, trying to see Stiles’s face.

“No, I mean, yeah, I was very sensitive, but that’s not it.” 

“What then?” 

“I’m bisexual, asshole. If you make me love sex this way I won’t ever be able to date girls.”

“You’ll just have to find girls who’ll peg you.” Jackson smiled, smugly. Stiles couldn't see his face, but he could tell by his tone of voice. He scratched his fingernails through Stiles’s hair.

Stiles groaned and growled into Jackson’s shoulder, “And how am I supposed to do that?”

“I dunno, can you use your Druidic powers to tell which girls have strap-ons under their beds?”

Stiles shot him a glare. “Strangely enough, while many of the things I’ve learned this summer have immediate practical applications, that hasn’t come up yet.” He stretched out flat on the bed, still on his belly, and crossed his arms under his face. Jackson rolled to his side, facing Stiles, and propped himself up on his elbow. He reached out with his left hand and started running his fingers through the cum on Stiles’s lower back and between the tops of his butt cheeks. Stiles shivered a little and pushed back into the caress. 

“It’s been a good summer though? You feel like it’s been worth it?”

“It’s not over, yet.” Stiles grinned sleepily at him. “Actually, I had kind of a breakthrough today.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jackson raised his eyebrows interrogatively. 

“Yeah. It’s sort of a mixed bag though.” Stiles wiggled his butt, and Jackson smacked it with the palm of his hand before they both settled down again. “One of the things I sort of had in my head for this summer was doing more research on the Nemeton. Deaton won’t talk about it, I assumed because it was some scary old-Druid blood magic, but I was hoping that I could figure out a way to fix it.” 

“You want to fix the Nemeton?” Jackson sounded fairly skeptical.

“Yeah - I mean, it’s supposed to protect the territory, that’s the whole point of it. But Gerard Fucking Argent chopped it down like thirty years ago, and now it’s calling all the monsters in a five hundred mile radius.” 

Jackson withdrew a little at the mention of Gerard, and Stiles kept talking quickly to change the focus of the conversation. 

“I thought if I could fix it, that would help the pack, you know? No more supernatural beacon; no more Beacon Hills, just Hills. It’d be something concrete I could do. So anyway, Abbot has these crazy old books, early English translations of Druidic texts, and I found out how to make a Nemeton. But I don’t think it’ll be useful.” 

“How do you make a Nemeton?”

“It’s a ritual, performed by a senior Emissary and his apprentice. If I were going to do it, I’d have to smear my blood and Deaton’s blood on the stump of the current Nemeton, because that’s the right place for the ley lines. Circle us with mountain ash, and chant a bunch of Celtic words. I’d have to fast first, too.” 

“So? You could do that.”

“Yeah, totally, but at the end of the little poem, Deaton would turn into a tree.”

Jackson jerked up and peered down into Stiles’s face again. “Wow. I guess we know why Deaton doesn’t talk about that kind of stuff.”

“Yeah, right?” Stiles agreed. “I guess in the old days it was kind of the apprentice’s graduation. Showed that you were ready to be a full-blown Druid and that your teacher thought he didn’t have anything left to teach you.” 

“That’s a hell of a graduation ceremony. And retirement.” Jackson lay down again, pillowing his head on his right arm. “So our Nemeton back in Beacon Hills used to be a Druid?”

“Yep. Only one book described the ritual, but I found references to it in another one, and it confirmed everything.” 

“Well, it sucks that you won’t be able to fix the one at home.” 

“I’m loading up on all kinds of warding and protection spells, and some glamours. And I just like this pack. It’s cool to see how it’s supposed to be done.” 

“Yeah, the Dyers are great.” Jackson smiled his contented smile and yawned.

“You talked to Rolland about Danny coming?” Stiles was sure he had, seeing how close the two of them were. 

“Yeah, Rolland and Macy are really pleased.” He rolled his eyes, but his tone was fond. “And Mellie wants to take goalie lessons from him.” 

Stiles yawned. He needed to get up and shower. Things felt . . . weird, downstairs, but he was just so comfortable and his blood was flooded with oxytocin and Jackson believed that sheets shouldn’t have a thread count lower than 1500 or you might as well be sleeping on a haphazard stack of pine boughs. “Things will be fine with Danny, you know? He loves you. He just wants you to be okay.” 

Jackson looked embarrassed and slapped Stiles again, this time on the thigh. “Go jump in the shower and I’ll change the sheets, then shower after you.” 

Stiles leaned over and put his mouth on Jackson’s shoulder and then, at the last minute turned the kiss into a raspberry. Jackson jerked and jumped out of bed, laughing. 

Stiles stumbled to the shower and gave himself a cursory rinse, stole Jackson’s towel to dry himself off, and zombie-walked back to collapse into some newly clean sheets. Jackson pulled the flat sheet up over him and padded naked out of the room towards his own shower. Stiles was asleep before he got back.


End file.
